The Second Voice
by Animagess
Summary: Second Voice, full-length YGO novel, is finally *COMPLETE*! In the inaccessible corridors of Yami Yugi's mind lies a presence neither he nor Yugi knew he had: A second, darker alter ego with an even darker agenda... In celebration, please read and review.
1. The Chamber

One word fer youse: Review.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Chapter 1  
  
"...Yami?" Yugi asked his partner one day as they were sitting outside, the grass damp under Yugi's hands as he leaned back on his palms. There was a slight shift in Yugi's mind as Yami prepared to answer.  
  
"Yes," replied the Pharaoh. "What is it?"  
  
The place in which this conversation was beginning was Yami's own Soul Room. Yugi wandered through it, awed; fascinated by the immense walls that dropped into darkness above and below the walkway, the brown, dusty corridors that led in all directions, the hidden trapdoors and pulleys that would crush the mind of anyone who tried to break through. He brushed his hand along one wall, tracing the faded hieroglyphics with a finger.  
  
At the same time, he could feel the wet grass soaking through his clothes, feel the cool breeze playing with his bangs. The two sensations- walking ancient paths through someone else's mind, the earthy smell and playful winds of the Real World- were like two transparant pictures superimposed on top of eachother. It was a strange feeling at first, but Yugi learned to cope with being in two worlds at the same time.  
  
"What is it?" Yami repeated, following Yugi down a path that he had walked many times before. He knew where it led to, so he didn't bother to stop his partner. He watched Yugi's childlike demeanor as he spun and craned his neck, trying to take in all the secrets, all the hidden memories that Yami had locked away. Yami had a faint, tolerant smile on his lips, but so far nothing had been able to make him crack into a full-sized grin.  
  
Yugi turned and looked at him, head cocked slightly to one side. "Well," he said, finally standing still, "I was just wondering..." He scuffled the dust underfoot with a sneaker.  
  
"...if you had any particular favorite room," he finished. He looked up.  
  
Yami walked the last few feet to his partner. He seemed unusually gentle today; less like the harsh, unforgiving Duelist Yugi had come to know, and more like... More like Anzu, almost. Perhaps he had been waiting for Yugi to bring up the subject.  
  
"...Heh..." Yami chuckled softly. He took a step so that he was slightly further along the pathway than Yugi was. "Come and see," was all he said. Yugi obediantly trotted after him, his steps clumsier and more awkward than Yami's smooth, unruffled glide.  
  
Yugi felt a chill as they walked down the length of the corridor, but put it down to the lack of central heating.  
  
The path opened up into a small chamber lined with pillars, which Yugi looked at with interest. "So is this where your favorite memory is?" "No," Yami replied. "It is but one of many unlocked recollections..." He strode to the wall at the opposite end of the room, Yugi following.  
  
As they got closer, Yugi could see that the wall was broken by a thin crack that extended into the shape of a large, square stone, that had served as a door. Peering at it, Yugi noticed a strip of darkness at the bottom of the stone, which apparently lifted upwards when the mental mechanism was activated. It had only swung up a few inches, however, and Yugi was forced to get down on his hands and knees in order to peer under it.  
  
"There is precious little to see," Yami told him. "Many a restless night have I traversed the length of this chamber, if only to bend down and catch but a glimpse of my lost past." There was a faint rustling sound, almost as though Yami had been about to let out a sigh.  
  
"I am fond of this chamber in particular," he remarked, without sentimentality apparent in his voice. "I know not why... But it attracts my heart like desert moths to a burning flame." He shrugged, imperceptibly.  
  
Yugi squinted into the shadows beneath the door...  
  
He scooted backwards, almost tripping over himself. Yami raised an eyebrow. "Is something amiss?"  
  
Yugi's eyes were wide. "N-no... I was just surprised..." he stammered. "I think I saw something moving under there, in the dark space beyond the door..." He got up, shakily. Yami still looked puzzled.  
  
"I have set my eyes upon that dark space ever since I was aware of my own existance," he said, fixing Yugi with his calculating gaze. "And never before have I seen the meanest ghost of a movement within those shadows."  
  
Yugi considered stooping down and checking again, but there was something vaguely menacing about that gap and so he decided to stay away from it. Yami, however, seemed to have no such trepeditions, as he was currently surveying the room with his usual cool stare.  
  
Trying to forget what had just happened, and being unusually successful at it (it was as if the dark space had sucked the memories right out of his head), Yugi picked himself up and brushed mental dust from his clothes.  
  
Looking around, and spotting something that made his skin tingle very slightly, Yugi wondered if Yami had noticed the scarlet streak that seemed to have been slashed upon one wall of the room. The mark was a little to the left of the giant stone door, and Yugi wondered why he hadn't noticed it before.  
  
"Hey... Yami..." Yugi murmured, without knowing why. Yami turned, his face holding a look of expectancy. "Yes?" Feeling a chill of apprehension, Yugi gestured to the streak. "...Yami... What is that?" he whispered.  
  
Yami apparently couldn't see what the urgent expression on Yugi's face was for, and Yugi himself wouldn't have been able to tell why he was acting so nervously. Yami looked blankly at the spot Yugi was pointing at. "...What is it you want to indicate to me?" Yami asked, peering into thin air. "It's nothing more than a blank wall."  
  
Later, while the two were exiting the chamber, Yugi thought he felt someone watching him and spun around. There was, of course, nothing there, but he could have sworn that whatever it was behind the great stone door had been spying and listening to the two ever since they had entered the room.  
  
But Yami had said that he had never seen anything move below the door before in his life, and he had been there for millenia.  
  
On the other hand, Yami hadn't been able to see the red streak on the wall, either...  
  
Shaking off his feelings of misapprehension, Yugi hurried to catch up with his partner and failed to think any more of the incident for the whole week.  
  
If only he had known... 


	2. Beyond the Stone Door

Chapter 2  
  
Yugi was asleep, his mind and body resting from a day of living.  
  
For Yami, the concept of life had become blurred. As he existed only in mind and soul, he could barely remember what it was like to actually have a physical form, and those memories that he did have were things like the smooth wooden desktops of Yugi's school and the mossy, spongy earth underfoot as Yugi walked across it on his way home.  
  
There was something missing in Yami's limited collection of physical sensations. He knew it. He missed it.  
  
But there was something in his Soul Room to fufill his cravings for memories of his own origins. Walking slowly, and taking his time lest his restlessness disturb Yugi's sleep, Yami made his way to the Stone Door chamber.  
  
Crouching, a lithe, dark shadow, Yami slid his fingers through the gap under the door, leaving trails in the dust. As he leaned further in, his arm disappearing into the dark space up to his shoulder, Yami's forehead softly brushed the vertical surface of the stone. He pushed, his arm muscles straining very slightly...  
  
He withdrew his hand from under the door. There was another faint rustling sound, but Yami was too preoccupied to notice or to care.  
  
On the tips of Yami's fingers, something sparkled. He inspected it more closely. A powder-like substance clung to his skin, tingling, fine particles of sand. And not just any ordinary sand. It smelled of something burning, something fierce, and harsh, and unforgivably hot. And yet, in the fineness of the grain, there was a soft, shimmering quality, like a mirage. It had a very faint smell, almost like sweat, and perfume mixed together into an indescribable odour.  
  
It was undoubtably desert sand.  
  
Mica, dust, perfume... Yami rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, gently, feeling the grains of his homeland. There was something crucial from his past beyond that door, and he longed, more than anything else, to know what it was. The rest of the desert, of which he held only the smallest fraction of, lay behind that stone, that wall. He could feel its presence.  
  
Once, when he had been a new spirit, barely younger than a chick freshly hatched from his shell, Yami had tried to break through one of the barriers surrounding his mind.  
  
The result of his foolish actions had nearly killed him.  
  
Now a wiser disembodied spirit, Yami merely wandered, a ghost haunting his own mind, helpless to do anything but feel. Of course, he was obligated to continue protecting Yugi; but sometimes, he wished for a body of his own, to be free from the constraints of someone else's thoughts.  
  
"I wish," Yami started to say, his voice sounding to himself as if it were coming from a different person in the next room, "I wish that I were free..."  
  
There was a rustle behind the door.  
  
Yami, oblivious, brushed his hands off, and prepared for Yugi's awakening. 


	3. Freedom

Chapter 3  
  
"You little punk!!" the bully howled, hopping around on one foot. His broad, ugly face was crinkled in pain and rage, but mostly the latter.  
  
Yami stared at Yugi's tormentor impassively, with the merest shadow of a smirk on his lips. "I warned you," he reprimanded, raising a finger, as if the subject was too delicate to talk about casually. "Now you have to play..." Yami's expression went from stony to an almost wicked delight, "a Penalty Game!!"  
  
Yami jabbed his finger towards the bully and prepared for another mind seige.  
  
Somewhere, birds were tweeting.  
  
Dogs would be barking.  
  
Children would be playing.  
  
And, in a world where things are always consistent, where things always make sense, Yami would be blowing this evil doer's mind straight back to where it belonged- into the unfathomable recesses of the Shadow Realm.  
  
Unfortunately, that world wasn't this one.  
  
If Yami hadn't been staring at his hands in shock, he might have been prepared for the bully's attack, when it came. As it was, he was very surprised, despite Yugi's mental warning that came a few seconds too late.  
  
"What do'ya thing yer playin' at, you &^$*ing little twerp??!!" the bully roared, towering over Yami, who was now on his hands and knees on the dusty ground behind the school. Yami didn't say anything, so the bully decided to kick him in the ribs.  
  
Yami let out a very tiny, very faint "haah...", but nothing more. He kept his shoulders hunched and he slowly pulled himself to a sitting position, resting on his knees.  
  
The bully reared back to begin administering a series of rather painful blows, but Yugi quickly mind-shuffled and managed to block the first kick with his forearm, which immediantly began to hurt.  
  
"No! Yugi! I am supposed to do this!!" Yami mentally shouted.  
  
And then, even as he said it, he knew that it wasn't true anymore.  
  
I am... free?  
  
This was the unquestioned verdict.  
  
Yami, numb, watched from the inside as the bully stalked off in search of other prey, leaving Yugi sprawled in the center of the court. Yugi coughed.  
  
"Hey... I'm sorry I didn't warn you sooner," Yugi said softly, in his Soul Room. Yami noticed that he could no longer feel the bruises and cuts the bully had inflicted on his former host's body. He couldn't even feel Yugi's thoughts anymore. It made him feel a bit lonely.  
  
"...Yami?" Yugi asked concernedly, as his physical self picked up its bag and began trudging homewards. Yami turned to face him, unsure of how to begin explaining what had just happened. He wasn't even sure if he had understood it himself.  
  
"Yugi..." he began, and stopped. Yugi was alarmed at the hesitation in Yami's voice. "What's wrong? What happened to your powers?" Yugi asked. He could sense that something was wrong. A connection had been broken. He could see it in Yami's eyes. They weren't partners anymore.  
  
"I have to go," Yami said.  
  
In the Real World, the chain around Yugi's neck, the chain that had kept them bound together for all this time, slowly, link by link, began to fall apart. 


	4. Breaking Boundaries

Chapter 4  
  
Something in the darkness rustled.  
  
Yami stood before the immense stone door, unsure of what to do next. He had no bags to pack, had no place to go. Now that he had his freedom, he had no idea what to do with it.  
  
Something had compelled him to come to this room. Something that had told him that he would somehow find answers here.  
  
The Puzzle, having dropped from its previous owner, lay on its side in the darkened courtyard. Bits and pieces of the chain, a symbol of Yami's bondage, lay scattered here and there. Yami didn't know where Yugi had gone; back home, he expected.  
  
"Well?" he questioned the silent doorway. "Speak."  
  
The stone said nothing; Yami was sure he had heard a noise a bit like tissue paper in the slightest of breezes, but he wasn't sure. It could have been his imagination.  
  
"You gave me my freedom. You helped me break the contract. Now what of it?" Yami asked again, louder this time. A wind picked up in the Real World, frisking through the shattered chain links and sliding over the smooth surface of the abandoned Puzzle.  
  
"Speak!" Yami commanded, above the noise of the wind. "I implore you, tell me what I must-"  
  
There was a snapping sound, like a pair of thunderbolts being hurled against the ears. Yami started. "Speak!!" he yelled.  
  
Something began oozing out from under the door. Something that wasn't sand.  
  
Yami stared at it in shock and horror. It curled around his ankles, and from there began to twist itself up his legs and over his torso. His arms were pinned, mentally, to his sides; it was if his mind was being compressed.  
  
The darkness- that's what it had to be, for nothing else could be so impossibly black and deep- had reached his neck. Yami struggled. The wind, slicing itself across a corner of the Millenium Puzzle, began to shriek a keen, high note.  
  
Somewhere far away from that place, a small boy living in the attic of the Kame Game Corner shuddered, rolled over, and went back to sleep, the tears still drying on his face. 


	5. On the Outside, Looking In

Chapter 5  
  
Yami opened his eyes.  
  
There was a tightness in his head that was unfamiliar to him at first, so he assumed it must be one of Yugi's headaches. Then he remembered the events of the previous night, and the regret and sorrow that followed were ten times worse than the physical pain.  
  
"Are we awake, now?" said a voice. It added, "That was purely a rhetorical statement."  
  
Yami noticed several odd things about the voice. For one thing, it sounded excruciatingly familiar, but he couldn't place the exact tone and timbre. For another thing, although he could clearly hear the voice, it went right into his head, as he imagined his own must have when he talked to Yugi. It had been a mentally-communicated statement; whoever was talking to him must be inside his Soul Room.  
  
Yami began to sit up, and nearly fell back down again when the shock of this next revelation hit him; he had an actual BODY.  
  
Trembling, he sat up straight and examined himself. He felt his hair, he ran his fingertips over his cheekbones. He was exactly himself. He was in the body that he must have had millions of years ago, back when he was still alive. He knew it the same way a mother knows her baby, the way the gods knew every star in the sky.  
  
His fingers were much that of a skilled gamer; slender, strong, and quick. His hair still stood upright, a crown of purple and blazing gold. He stood up; narrow hips, perfect posture, muscular and yet wiry arms, all a legacy from his ancient past.  
  
Yami looked around for the voice. Obviously, nobody except himself was in the room; so he decided to explore his surroundings a bit.  
  
Marvelling at the way when he moved, the action was a memory frozen in his mind, and his and only his to keep. He wouldn't have to share his experiances with host after host after host, until they were all worn out and coated with dust like most of the things in his Soul Room. He treasured, briefly, the sensation of standing up for the first time, the recollection still fresh and new.  
  
The room he was in was small, and compact. There was a narrow bed, a small desk, and a mirror. The walls were undecorated save for a drab, black and white print of a small girl sitting on a hill overlooking a river. Yami looked at it briefly; then he turned his attention towards the mirror.  
  
It was about twice the size of his head, and was slightly dirty and scratched in places. Yami peered into it, wonderingly.  
  
This is the real me? he thought, staring at his reflection.  
  
There was a movement in his mind that he had previously been unaware of since the voice had spoken to him. Defenses raised, Yami mentally whirled around to face the intruder.  
  
"Intruder?" the voice snorted derisively, from the darkness. "I think not. I have been here since the beginning."  
  
"This is my Soul Room," Yami growled, upset at having his newfound privacy violated so soon. "Who are you? Show yourself!!"  
  
"As you wish," said the voice, and the owner of it stepped out into Yami's vision. Yami then knew why the voice had seemed so familiar, yet so hard to place.  
  
Yami stared at Yami, unblinkingly. "Surprised?" he asked, with a smile that Yami had felt on his own lips time and time again. "I do not know why you should be. I am, after all, you."  
  
Yami was too confused to say anything that he really wanted to say, so instead he asked, "What should I call you?"  
  
The other Yami mused, tilting his head upwards. Yami wondered if he had that same mannerism.  
  
"Well," he finally said, lowering his chin, "since you seem to have given yourself a Japanese-based name..." He gestured to himself, with a gamer's hand.  
  
"...Call me... Yami no Ni Koe."  
  
He smiled, very slightly. "That is Dark, or 'Yami's', Second, and Voice, if I'm not mistaken. Yami's Second Voice."  
  
Yami opened his mouth, but Koe stopped him. "Now do not forget," he warned, raising a finger (which Yami realized, with a sickened sensation, was his own), "just because you and I call eachother by different names... does not mean that we are in any way different in mind and soul."  
  
"How did you do all this?" Yami demanded, feeling annoyed at this other self, who seemed quite controlling and overly-confident.  
  
"...The body... Oh, that was made of shadows. I used a memory of yourself in ancient times to construct it..." Yami Koe waved his hand, dismissively. Yami found himself watching the other's every moves, trying to decipher which ones were Koe's and which ones were truly his own. He realized that he had been so preoccupied with Yugi's affairs that he had no idea of the differences, if there were any.  
  
Yami Koe started walking away. Yami, to his utter horror, found himself trailing after him.  
  
"Wait..." Yami no Ni Koe turned, and watched him with a disconcertingly impassive gaze. Yami felt as if he were staring into the reflection of the mirror again.  
  
"Why?" he asked his other self.  
  
Yami Ni looked at him. "Because I could," he replied. Yami grew irritated. "That is not a satisfactory answer," he said, folding his arms. He suddenly noticed that Yami Ni had a slightly darker shade of hair and skin than he did, which pleased him. He decided not to further pursue the subject.  
  
His darker self continued gazing at him for a second longer, then turned around and walked down a corridor until he melted away into the shadows from whence he came.  
  
In the Real World, Yami noticed that he was wearing a loose black t- shirt and black jeans. He wished he had Yugi's old school uniform back, so he could customize it like he usually did. But there weren't many fashion options for what he was wearing now.  
  
He plucked absently at the cotton fabric of his shirt, noting the slightly rough texture. Then he got up from the bed and prepared to open the door.  
  
There wasn't a door. 


	6. The Price of Freedom

Chapter 6  
  
Yami swivelled sharply, eyes running over the blank walls of the room, searching for a way out. There was none.  
  
"What is the meaning of this?" he mentally asked of Yami no Ni Koe, as the latter stood silently in the corridor. Yami Ni had his hands in his pockets, as Yami himself frequently had. This fact went completely unobserved by Yami, who wanted answers.  
  
"There is no door."  
  
"I am aware of that fact," Yami Ni replied, coldly. Yami's hands were dropped loosely at his sides. "Why?" he asked.  
  
Yami Ni turned away. "Well... You may not have noticed, but you have completely lost your Shadow abilities-" "I am aware of that fact," Yami retorted, sarcastically. Yami Ni seemed not to have noticed. "-which is a product of your breaking the contract with your former host."  
  
"Now," Yami Ni went on, taking one hand out of his pocket, "you have as much power as Yugi did while you resided in him- which, basically, means none. While you may still retain a precious few Shadow abilities, I doubt that they will do you any good- In other words, you are as powerless as your hosts, and I have taken on the role of a so-called Yami." He gestured, to himself with his free hand. "That means I have all your powers and abilities... And you have a physical body."  
  
Yami Ni smiled Yami's infuriating smile. "A fair trade-off, don't you think?"  
  
Yami stared in defiant incomprehension. "Do you mean to say... You stole my Shadow abilities?!"  
  
His dark counterpart looked slightly offended, but like Yami, his facial expressions betrayed nothing. "I stole nothing. You made a deal, did you not?" Yami didn't want to admit that he had no idea what Yami Ni was talking about, so he remained silent.  
  
Yami Ni pressed further. "Remember... That one lonely night, in my chambers, you wished for freedom on a sprinkle of dust from the past. That was enough to unleash my presence from behind the Stone Door, and enough to let me grant your wish in the only way I knew how- Using your Shadow abilities for myself to free you and create your own body."  
  
Yami said nothing, but his mind was reeling. So this was the creature lurking behind his deepest desire... A mirage, or an illusion of himself? Why had this shape-shifting shadow decided to turn itself into a likeness of its host- Or was Yami Ni really the same person, as he claimed to be? The evidence was right in front of him, but it proved nothing that Yami wanted to know.  
  
"Anyway," Yami Ni was saying, apparently oblivious to Yami's consternation, "my prime directive was to free myself of the chamber your mind held me imprisoned in. To do this, I had to make that deal with you, by breaking the link between you and Yugi Mutou. While I am still somewhat trapped in your mind..." Yami Ni's smile dropped a notch while he recollected this fact, and then grew even wider as he added, "...I am still in posession of your powers..." Yami suddenly remembered the non-existant door.  
  
"..and I am fully in control."  
  
Yami Ni stood there, still with that ever-present smirk upon his face. Yami wondered if he had ever seemed this obnoxious to his own enemies.  
  
"The door... How did you-" "Shadows manipulate matter. It's their nature. I thought you, of all the people I could be, would know that; being the so-called Master of the Dark Realm... The King of the Shadow Games..." Yami Ni shook his head petulantly. "I only did it so you would understand the full extent of my/our powers..."  
  
As Yami Ni said 'my/our', Yami realized that his other self was somehow saying these two words at the same time. When he moved his lips, something in the atmosphere shifted, and the sound hitting Yami's mental ears was that of two words being said simeltaneously. Yami looked gaurdedly at Yami Ni, who gazed back with his own clear, reddish-violet eyes.  
  
"No," Yami heard himself say. "You didn't do it to show me my abilities. I apparently never knew the full boundaries of the Shadow Games, now that I have seen what you have done..." Yami stepped closer to Yami Ni, trembling, feeling on the verge of a sudden revelation.  
  
"...You did it to emphasis your control over me... You said so yourself! Because you want to get out. You cannot afford to have people in the way. Therefore, you would attempt to overpower me while I am currently in my most vulnerable state, which you tricked me into-" Yami's voice was rising. "-so you would be able to complete your final goal, which was once my goal! In other words, you wanted freedom, just as I had..." Yami Ni said nothing. "...But... Unlike me... You are willing to use and deviate from the desires of others, to fufill your own. You said it yourself. Shadows like to manipulate."  
  
Yami pointed an accusing finger, as he had done so many times in the past. "You are at fault, Yami no Ni Koe. You have revealed too much."  
  
Yami no Ni Koe stood there calmly, regarding Yami with a piercing, calculating eye. "Of course I told you all I knew. There's nothing you can do about it, after all."  
  
Yami felt a chill.  
  
...I am fully in control...  
  
"...Besides... Like you, I am quite proud of my achievments. What is the point of killing so many men if you are not going to be acknowledged for it?" Yami Ni's smile was on the brink of malevolence.  
  
...my prime directive was to free myself of the chamber your mind held me imprisoned in...  
  
"I have been here ever since you first developed your Shadow abilities. You never noticed me..."  
  
There was a rustling sound.  
  
"...But I was always there..."  
  
Yami remembered Yugi's strange behaviour in the Stone Door chamber.  
  
"...and now I'm here."  
  
Yami no Ni Koe started to laugh, tossing his head back and letting the shadows in Yami's mind dance like gum wrappers in the wind around his ankles. 


	7. Backstage Shadows

Chapter 7  
  
"So you have me imprisoned, as I have had you."  
  
Yami, caught in two worlds, was running his fingers along the blank wall where he was sure the door had been, while he watched Yami no No Koe with a suspicious and untrusting eye.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe had both hands in his pockets again. Yami wanted to grab him by the slender shoulders and shake him until all the darkness dropped out of Yami Ni and back into himself, or until Yami Ni told Yami exactly what he was up to. He didn't, though. Yami Ni was in control.  
  
"That is an accurate statement," Yami Ni agreed, watching Yami watch him. "What will you do about it?"  
  
Yami glared. "Nothing. You have all the power. I am everything you said I was- As helpless as my hosts."  
  
Yami Ni smiled the smile that Yami had now realized was every bit as annoying and disconcerting as his opponents had probably found it. "Aren't we the arrogant one?" he mocked, softly- Yami noticed his casual use of the word 'we' in conjunction with 'one'. "You assume too much, Yami. Your statement implies that your hosts were completely helpless, which is the position you are in at this moment."  
  
Yami looked blank, so Yami Ni went on. "I'm sure that you have noticed, having been a 'yami' spirit once, yourself; we do not have control over everything, much less the minds of our hosts. I'm sure that some of us have more influence over certain minds than others," he added, as Yami opened his mouth to protest, "but in the case of the relationship between partners that have become aware of eachother..." Yami Ni shrugged, as if resigned, "...I'm afraid that it is usually the host who holds most of the control."  
  
Yami then recalled the time when Yugi had refused his help in the Duel with Mai Kujaku; stuck in Yugi's mind, Yami could do no more than watch from the inside as Yugi's monsters were destroyed... And then there was the match with Pegasus, which had involved Yugi's plan to temporarily 'banish Yami from the corridors of his mind'- or, 'mind-shuffling', as they had later called it.  
  
So, yes, he would admit it. When two partners were aware of eachother, the host clearly had the advantage.  
  
"I suppose you are right..." Yami muttered, turning away. Yami no Ni Koe had a way of making one feel abjectly humiliated, even when it clearly wasn't his fault at all. Yami felt, somewhere deep down, that this was a trait he had somehow used upon his hapless opponents, in some form or another. The girl, Anzu, had referred to it as 'psyching out', but he hadn't paid much conscious thought to the concept until now.  
  
As Yami Ni continued to watch him intently, Yami had a realization that left him cold.  
  
There was a chill in the corridor as Yami's mental shock gusted through the room. Yami Ni would have had to be practically dead not to notice it.  
  
"What it is?" he asked, not in concern, but in morbid fascination.  
  
"Wait... You said that... you said that when two partners are aware of eachother's existance, then the host usually has the upper hand..." Yami Ni nodded in a patronizing, Oh-well-I-never-knew-THAT way. In the physical world, Yami felt his throat constricting with horror at this latest revelation. He forced himself on.  
  
"But... If one of the partners is hidden, than the other cannot be aware of him. Therefore, the concealed spirit could... control the other... behind their back, in the shadows... Couldn't they?...." Yami swallowed, but retained enough of his former pride to look Yami Ni square in the eye.  
  
He stared at himself.  
  
"Yesssss..." Yami Ni said, hissing gently. "That is the basic concept, yes. Well done. Influence and manipulation are what shadows do best..." Yami Ni's voice had a slightly malevolent cheeriness to it that was making Yami's head spin. He tried to focus on what he was trying to say. "So... therefore... my actions in the past... Have they been, ah, altered by you, in any way?"  
  
Yami felt as though he were one of those stoic, bland interviewers he had seen so often on Yugi's television. Yami Ni was anything but your average interviewee, however. "Undoubtably. I have already explained to you the habits of shadows, and still you persist with these inane questions? I am truly disappointed at your lack of listening skills, Yami..." Yami Ni's demeanor, while up until this point had been basically tolerant in a derisive sort of way, had taken a definite turn for the nasty, Yami decided. He thought he had heard just about enough, anyway.  
  
Yami Ni wasn't finished with him yet, however. "Yami, we have to learn to cooperate with eachother. We are partners now, and there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it," he told Yami, in the sort of voice Yami usually reserved for talking people out of things and wrapping up arguments. "Forget about the past. It's over now. I am no longer in the shadows; you can see me now, can you not? We have to begin trusting eachother."  
  
"Why?" Yami responded in a slightly sullen tone, which he had never used before. "Sulking like that will do us no good at all," Yami Ni reprimanded, while at the same time managing to crow the fact that Yami was acting like a spoiled child.  
  
In the physical world, Yami's questing fingers suddenly encountered an old wooden doorframe, protruding slightly from the cracked, dirty walls. Clearly, it was Yami Ni's signal that it was time to go.  
  
Yami opened the door and stepped out into the carpeted hallway, not knowing or caring where he was, and followed the exit sign out into the open.  
  
It was only later that Yami realized that his alter ego hadn't adequately answered any of his questions, and that, he would soon figure out, was how Yami Ni worked; he couldn't be confronted head-on, and no matter how many times Yami tried to corner him in a conversation, Yami Ni would elude him and slip out of his grasp as easily as a shadow. And this pointless one-sided battle left Yami knowing about as much about Yami Ni and his motives as he had before he knew his alter ego had existed.  
  
But if there was one thing Yami could be certain about, it was that Yami Ni could not be trusted. He found it deeply disturbing that Yami Ni had been behind his actions up until yesterday (or was it before then; Yami was unsure of the exact time of Yami Ni's release), and was feeling the beginnings of what felt like an emotion called fear; something Yami had felt little of in his life.  
  
Shivering, and trying to ignore his fearful thoughts about where he was going, what he was doing, and who was making him carry these things out, Yami wondered briefly what his former partner was up to at this moment... 


	8. The Soul Snatcher

Chapter 8  
  
The police officer looked up as a young man- or was it an older boy? She couldn't tell at that distance- walked out of the apartment building. She turned her head and watched him as he crossed the lawn and began heading towards the downtown district.  
  
She began to follow him. The boy- or man- had a shock of purple and yellow hair, and was wearing a black t-shirt that seemed several sizes too big on him but could still be dismissed as a casual fashion sense. He had black jeans and sneakers, and a slender, wiry build. She couldn't tell much of his face from what she had seen, but that would soon be remedied.  
  
Yami turned around as he heard the police officer's footsteps approaching. He looked up at her, with a mildly inquisitive expression on his face.  
  
The young man- or teenage boy, she still couldn't tell!- had very sharp features. From his nose to his slightly almond shaped eyes, he seemed to be made entirely of slicing lines and fine points. He looked at her. "Is there something you need?" His voice betrayed nothing about his age or his current emotion.  
  
"Excuse me, but would you mind telling me where you're headed?" The police officer smiled. "I've been assigned to keep a full report on this area... Someone was assaulted here last night, and I have to keep an eye out on the place." Yami stared at her, impassively. The police officer took out a notepad and a pencil. "Now, I didn't see you come in here... How odd." She chewed her pencil and made some brief notes. "Now, if I could see some ID, and get some information about where you're headed and where you were last night, that would be great!"  
  
She looked at him, expectantly. Yami wasn't the type to panic, and he wasn't going to do so now, but he was beginning to worry about what this women might do about his apparent lack of motives or identity. He wasn't a natural storyteller, either, and was just about to try and formulate a plan that might get him out of this mess when he felt a very strange sensation deep in his chest.  
  
There was a wooshing sound, and Yami's world went blank for what seemed like a few seconds.  
  
When he opened his eyes, the police officer was lying on the ground; eyes wide open, and staring at nothing.  
  
Yami looked at her, then looked around. Nobody was there. He wouldn't get caught.  
  
"What did you do?!" Yami hissed at the person he was sure was responsible. "What did you do to her, Koe?!" Yami no Ni Koe looked anything but ashamed or embarassed as he casually replied, "I assimilated her Soul."  
  
Yami shouted, "What?!" Yami Ni calmly repeated his statement, carefully rewording it as if the concept had been too complex for Yami's feeble comprehension. "I removed her Soul, and absorbed it." He looked vaugely satisfied.  
  
Yami was horrified to the point of not being able to say anything, and just stood there with a mortified look on his face.  
  
His alter ego seemed uncaring of what Yami's opinions were on his questionable dining habits, and proceeded to explain why it had to be done. "It would have caused an unneccessary argument, which would have no doubt resulted in our arrest. It was better to get her out of the way, don't you think?"  
  
He smiled. "And if it makes you feel any better about the room we were staying in, the assaulter was me. I felt our Soul was hungry. So you had nothing to worry about."  
  
Yami said nothing, and soon Yami Ni gave up and wandered off to parts unknown.  
  
If there was one thing that Yami had appreciated from the whole fiasco, it was that he now knew he and Yami no Ni Koe could not possibly be the same person.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe had other ideas on the subject, however. 


	9. The Sum of the Whole

Chapter 9  
  
When his grandson came into the Game Corner on that fateful evening, Sugoroku Mutou noticed several strange things about him.  
  
One was the fact that he had a black eye and several conspicuous scratches on his face (although that hadn't been so strange a few months ago, it had become a rare occurence since Yami had shown up), another was that Yugi appeared to have been crying (which was unusual for the reason that Yugi didn't often cry when he was attacked by the older kids; it had happened so many times in the past, he had simply regarded it as 'one of those things'. At least until Yami had been there), and the third thing, which was the most important as far as Sugoroku was concerned, because it meant that his assumption that none of the first two things would ever happen again because Yami would be there to protect Yugi would be forever proven wrong.  
  
"Where is your Puzzle?" Sugoroku asked Yugi urgently. Yugi wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. "He left" was all he said, before trudging upstairs and closing the door softly behind him.  
  
Sugoroku was not the type to persue things that weren't his business; on the other hand, if Yugi was no longer protected by his fearless alter ego, then it would soon become his business.  
  
He gazed sadly up the stairs to where Yugi's bedroom lay, and slowly tore off a piece of paper from a nearby notebook. He proceeded to write a note to Yugi's teachers, asking that they excuse him from school for a while. He would drop it off with Jonouchi or Anzu, if they came by.  
  
Yugi lay on the bed. Half his soul was missing. There was a deep, empty gap where Yami's Soul Room had been, and its sudden absence had caused a vaccum of nothingness. There was no pain, sorrow or lonliness in the vaccum; but there was plenty in the part of Yugi's soul that had always been his.  
  
The chain, and its heavy burden, were gone. The lightness around Yugi's neck was neither liberating nor consoling. He needed its familiar weight pulling at the back of his neck, the feel of cool metal against his skin.  
  
He felt betrayed. He knew it was stupid, but he felt it anyway. He wondered where Yami was, and the feelings of betrayal could not withstand the deep longing Yugi was feeling for him now.  
  
He needed him back.  
  
Yugi didn't do anything, though. There was nothing he could do but sob, softly and distantly, and hope beyond all recognition of hope that Yami would come back.  
  
Unaware of Yugi's condition, Yami was walking down the sidewalk as quickly as he could without arousing further suspicion.  
  
"Where are we going?" Yami asked his alter ego, carefully using the word 'we' to imply that he actually trusted Yami no Ni Koe. He was certain that Yami Ni wouldn't fall for it, at least not in the short run, but it was all he could do.  
  
Yami Ni didn't answer his question, as usual. This irked Yami, but he managed to keep his self-control and stayed silent. He walked past the seedy, suburban neighborhoods that surrounded the heart of the city, and made the transition into the bustle and glitter that was downtown Domino.  
  
Large buildings crowded the sky as Yami journeyed aimlessly through the maze of sidewalks, weaving around people in business suits and people with baby strollers. He felt empty and drained. He had listened to Yami Ni's spiel about soul-feasting, but he couldn't see how that was meant to nourish his spirit. It probably didn't; Yami Ni just liked to abuse his power.  
  
"Despite what you may think, we're very much alike," Yami Ni said, gliding smoothly up in Yami's mind. Yami could not feel Yami Ni's presence, which was disconcerting. It was as if his soul was a black hole, absorbing attention and enabling him to slip away relatively unnoticed. Yami did not wonder why he had never sensed Yami Ni in his mind before.  
  
"What do you mean?" Yami replied, in a dead tone. He wouldn't let someone like Yami Ni faze him.  
  
"You keep making all these conveniant little rationalizations to yourself," Yami Ni explained, in a voice that Yami found slightly condescending. "You keep thinking to yourself, 'I am not at all like that other person, because of his capacity to be so casually brutal'..." Yami was shocked at hearing his very thoughts being spoken out loud, word for word, but kept silent.  
  
"...And so you end up with the conclusion that I am merely a sick, twisted product of your own imagination, somehow made into a reality by the Shadow Games." Yami Ni raised a finger and smiled.  
  
"I am sorry to say this, but you are deluding yourself, Pharaoh."  
  
Yami started. "You knew who I was?!" Yami Ni snorted irritably. "I WAS you. I thought we had established that." "We did, but..." Yami cursed himself for thinking of saying the next bit, but he went ahead and said it anyway.  
  
"If you have been skulking around in my head for all these years, then... do you know of any memories that I- we- might once have lived through?" Yami was torn between hope and shame that he would resort to consulting this dark, devious doppleganger.  
  
Yami Ni broke into another smile completey indistinguishable from the one he had broken into five seconds ago.  
  
"Yesss," he almost purred. "I have memories of our past life..."  
  
Yami wanted to shake him again. "Tell me!" he demanded, feeling like a puppy dog begging for a bone. Yami Ni sensed his discomfort and stalled again. Yami wanted to kill him.  
  
"That isn't the point," Yami Ni finally said, somehow managing to look down at Yami even though the two were the exact same height. "The point is that we are, in fact, the same person; therefore, I would ask that you stop resisting my thoughts."  
  
Yami wanted to sputter and flail about like Yugi's friend Jonouchi always seemed to do. But several millenia of practicing tempermental restraint were not about to be wasted on one minute of self-indulgence, so he shut up. Yami Ni look satisfied, and the urge to hit him returned. "If we are so alike, I should not have the desire to injure you every five seconds," Yami wanted to say. But he and Yami Ni were similiar enough in behaviour for Yami to know that if he said that, Yami Ni would merely laugh in his face and change the subject.  
  
"You have been tainted by your former host," Yami Ni sniffed, peering at the walls with an air of distaste. Yami wasn't sure if this was another sudden topic shift, or if Yami Ni was getting to the point. It became clear in a moment. "You were once exactly like me. Now I am not so sure that we are one..."  
  
Now it was Yami's turn to laugh. "You have just contradicted everything you have been saying for the last five hours," he sneered. He was almost delighted to see the faintest look of annoyance crawling across Yami Ni's dark features. To an outsider, his expression merely flickered the tiniest bit, but Yami could see those emotions as clearly as he could see a vase shatter on the floor in broad daylight.  
  
"You must listen to me." Yami Ni's voice held a tone of urgency that Yami had never heard before, so he stopped gloating.  
  
"Once, our Souls were aligned. We were one and the same being. But now that I have been locked away for thousands of years, your Soul had become corrupted by the hosts whose Soul Rooms you share." Yami no Ni Koe looked deadly serious. Yami began to wonder if he was really telling the truth.  
  
Yami Ni continued. "It is vital that we re-combine as one Soul. Otherwise, the other is merely a half, the sum of a much greater whole. We are not complete. Can't you feel it?" His dark eyes pleaded with Yami, who, momentarily, was in control.  
  
Yet Yami could feel it, now that Yami Ni mentioned it; a disjointed crack in the back of his mind, and the knowledge that Yami Ni had of it frightened him. How could Yami Ni notice all these things about Yami, while Yami himself could barely recall his own past? It wasn't right.  
  
But maybe Yami Ni was.  
  
"Yours must be a larger sum than mine," Yami said, softly. He stared at himself through the shadows, which, under Yami Ni's unblinking gaze, seemed to be alive. And of course they were alive.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe's eyes were welcoming. Yami's mistrust of him weakened. "There is only one conceivable way to make us whole again, Yami. I am sure you can figure out what that is..." Yami tried to think, but the shadows kept getting in the way. He couldn't form a coherent thought. He felt very sleepy. "Assim.... Assimilation?..." he asked, slowly. The word seemed to be wading at him through a huge pool of mud.  
  
Yami Ni's smile widened, imperceptibly. "It would take a while. But shadows can absorb anything, with enough time."  
  
That sounded strangely reassuring... Yami was on the verge of giving in to Yami Ni's proposal when something flashed through his head. White, and piercing.... 


	10. Bargaining

Chapter 10  
  
Yami stumbled. Something white, and piercing... Yami Ni cursed, loudly, and grabbed at it. The white something vanished into Yami Ni's hand, which he closed into a fist until the light disappeared through his fingers. He was scowling.  
  
"Memory residue..." Yami Ni mumbled, not necessarily to Yami. He clenched his fist even further, and Yami felt a slight popping sensation. He stared. "What did you do to it?" Yami Ni looked at him. "I neutralized it," he said, in a toneless voice; and Yami realized that his other self had completely annihilated one of his memories, or something very much like it.  
  
Sensing Yami's rage, Yami Ni quickly explained. "It is not a memory, but residual experiance. Some may have leaked out when you freed me. They are such things as five seconds of an emotion you felt ten thousand years ago in the middle of the night..." He thought for another example with which to cool Yami's temperment. "Or an object you saw in a dream yesterday." He let his hand relax and stuck it back in his pocket without taking his eyes off Yami. "So, nothing worth your attention or recollection. Larger memories are harder to get rid of."  
  
At first this last bit struck Yami as implying that Yami Ni regularily went around blasting his past into oblivion, but then he realized it was just another subject change. Furiously, he tried to get his thoughts back on the matter at hand. Yami Ni's speech patterns were becoming dangerously hard to keep track of; he'd better watch what he said.  
  
"What were you saying about assimilating my soul?" Yami asked, sweetly enough to irritate Yami Ni. His plan, or whatever it was that he had been trying to do, had failed. Yami merely wanted to rub it in.  
  
Yami Ni's reaction was a little disappointing, though; Yami Ni looked carefully at Yami and stated, firmly, that it wouldn't matter at this point and that they would discuss it later.  
  
"But," he added in a warning tone that made Yami really pay attention, "I would advise you to think about what I have told you. We need eachother." He looked at Yami, not exactly in the eye. "I need you."  
  
Yami barked a short, derisive laugh. "You need me??" he asked, rhetorically. "It certainly seems that way. But what I do not understand is why you don't just take what you need from me and leave. It would be easier than attempting this foolish 'contract' business, don't you agree?"  
  
Yami Ni said nothing.  
  
"After all," Yami went on, relishing this temporary moment of silence in which to mock Yami Ni as long as he could, "Shadows can absorb anything, is that not what you said?" He grinned. "And they love manipulation. So, I implore you! Tell me want you want from me. Or, better yet, just take it. You will get it either way."  
  
"You have misunderstood me, Pharaoh," Yami Ni said, the urgency creeping back into his voice. But Yami no longer cared, and said so.  
  
Yami Ni looked at him, seemingly upset. He spun around and disappeared, as he usually did.  
  
Yami watched him go, satisfied. He then resumed concentrating on navigating through Domino City, his destination unknown.  
  
It was only until after he had crossed his third traffic-jammed street that he began to wonder what Yami Ni was up to. If Yami had really made him mad, he might have gone off to zap a few more of his residual memories; or worse! Start picking away at the larger ones!  
  
Yami felt sick. Yami Ni was dangerous. Yami shouldn't have been playing around with him like that... If Yami no Ni Koe got annoyed enough, it might frusterate him into doing something... rash.  
  
No. Yami Ni wasn't the rash sort. He would sit in the darkness and plot... And he can plot until my body becomes an empty shell! Yami suddenly realized. He wouldn't give in to Yami Ni's fiendish little manipulations. Not for all the abilities in the Shadow Realm.  
  
Still, Yami reflected, as he waited for a Walk sign to light up, Yami Ni really seemed to need him. Of course, he wouldn't say exactly why... But that was Yami Ni's nature. Perhaps there were some things even Yami Ni was compelled to do, without knowing why he did it. It was going a bit far to presume that Yami Ni also had an alter ego behind his motives, controlling his every move; but surely not even Yami Ni had acess to all of their memories? It was this thought that gave Yami some hope. There were ways of not falling into Yami Ni's traps; all he had to do was find them and use them to his advantage.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe cannot know everything, Yami thought, as he crossed the street behind some weary-looking elderly couple. He is merely bluffing.  
  
Yet... He did have some of Yami's memories... and he seemed to know more about the Shadow Realm than Yami did. And Yami really did owe him something, after all- It wasn't Yami Ni's fault that he had been released from Yami's mental prison. Perhaps he should have accepted Yami Ni's proposal...  
  
Yami was completely stuck. On one hand, he could choose to ignore Yami Ni, which, besides being completely impossible, would leave Yami with no answers. He might be happier if he did, though. On the other hand, he wanted his memories of the past back, more than anything, and if it meant sacrificing his soul to a dark, shady creature posing as himself, then wasn't it worth the risk?  
  
I will go along with him for now, he thought. I will not give in to him, not yet...  
  
He walked past a skyscraper coated in glass panels. The sun was setting.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe stalked down the halls of his mind, laughing. You already have, Pharaoh... he crowed silently to himself. You already have... 


	11. Memories

Chapter 11  
  
Yami sat alone in the empty movie theater, letting the light from the screen play over his face.  
  
At first he'd tried to settle down and enjoy the novelty of two- dimensional movement, but Yami no Ni Koe wasn't interested. The frusteration from the last previous hours seemed to have been forgotten, but Yami could feel him in his mind, the whole time, and he wouldn't stop shifting around.  
  
"Why are we here, Ni Koe?" Yami asked dispiritedly, and refusing point blank to use his own name when addressing Yami Ni. He wasn't prepared to stoop that far; not yet.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe did the mental equivalent of looking up in surprise. "Well," he said, as if the answer was obvious, "I thought that you might appreciate a brief moment of relaxation from our excursion." Now it was Yami's turn to be surprised. "Why would you think something like that?"  
  
Yami Ni shook his head. "It is just as bad as I had feared," he said in a low voice. "When we were whole, we never would have had this kind of communication problem. Occupying the minds of all those other hosts has clearly had a worse effect on you than I had previously thought." Disregarding the subject change, Yami took the bait. "That is untrue," he replied, hotly. "My previous hosts have been more generous and accomadating than I would have expected from them."  
  
Yami Ni snorted. "I suppose now you believe that they harbored you with less malice than you deserved." He gently clucked his tongue. "Teh. You must come back. All this exposure to inferior minds has clouded your judgement."  
  
Changing the subject on purpose this time, Yami said "I would rather continue straight to our destination than waste time and energy spent doing nothing." "As you wish," Yami Ni replied, courteously. He did not, as Yami had hoped he would, mention where their destination was.  
  
Yami got out of his seat and walked into the popcorn-strewn aisle. Behind him, the nine-foot face of some popular movie star moved smoothly through the pixellated world of flashing teeth and flowing hair, as he swooped down to award a rehearsed kiss to the swooning female lead. Yami ignored them both and their soft, squishy noises as he left the theater.  
  
It was getting dark out. Yami crossed the relatively empty street and continued following the sidewalk, wherever his feet were taking him. Not used to having a phyisical body, Yami was rapidly becoming fatigued, but what he had said to Yami Ni about wanting to keep moving was true. He passed a record shop, two resturants and a bookstore.  
  
Soon it was pitch black. Yami shivered from the drop in temperature, and walked faster. A chorus of loud noises reached his ears.  
  
A flock, a crowd, a party of raccous teenagers were weaving their way towards him. Yami stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and watched as they came closer. He could smell the beer on their collective breath from where he was standing.  
  
Stumbling, smoking, drinking, swearing, laughing, the swaying group ground to a halt as they approached the strange youth who was in their way.  
  
"Hey, ****ing move it, ****ing kid!!" one of them said, conversationally. Another said something in a slurred, garbled voice that Yami couldn't understand. They laughed and swayed drunkenly before him, like snakes to a charmer.  
  
Yami was overcome with a sense of power. These people had no authority, whether over him or even their own bodies. They were out of control. They were no use to him at all.  
  
So maybe his sympathy for them was dampened by this thought, as he watched them growing still and cold on the sidewalk, the life gone from their drunken eyes.  
  
Yami Ni licked his lips. "Fools. They were dead either way. It was just a matter of years." Yami smiled at the joke. "Years are nothing. I should know," he reminded his yami, but not in a vengeful or even sarcastic tone of voice. "I know," Yami Ni said, and the expression on his face mirrored that of Yami perfectly.  
  
There was something in Yami's eyes as he stared in fascination at the bodies cooling their souls from the ground. He wasn't horrified at all this time. He almost felt as if they had deserved it, even wanted it... After all, don't all creatures, in some way, long for oblivion?  
  
Something clicked in Yami's mind. A bar slid into place, a chain lowered, a weight dropped. Something rolled onto the mental floor of Yami's Soul Room.  
  
Yami looked astonished as he followed the sensation to its source. "What was that?"  
  
"A connection has been made." Yami Ni's voice was a mixture of triumph and something else that Yami could not immediantly identify. "Part of our Soul has realigned. Perhaps by an idea, or a smiliar thought..." He followed Yami through a series of doors. "It may have unlocked a previously inacessible memory or emotion from our past."  
  
Yami reached the place in his mind where he had felt the thing drop. His eyes searched the floor and spotted a large, black object that had rolled up against a wall. He walked over to it and picked it up.  
  
It was like a black hole, drawing the eyes into its depths and never letting go. It was about the size of Yami's head, and it was covered all over in sharp, blade-like inscriptions.  
  
"A memory....?" Yami whispered, staring at it in awe. Yami Ni didn't answer, but held it in the gaze of his eyes for an unbroken minute.  
  
Yami touched it, tenderly. Its obsidian skin flashed and reflected Yami's face in its smooth, curved surface. Yami could not look away. How could he? This was what he had been searching for for over a thousand years.  
  
"How do I..." Yami trailed off, at a loss for words. Yami Ni answered by taking hold of Yami's wrist and manuevering his hand so that their fingertips were brushing the carved inscriptions. "Read it," Yami Ni whispered, not taking his eyes off the ebony globe. Yami, hesistating, drew his fingers across the strange symbols, and closed his eyes.  
  
Yami's mind opened into a world of black crystal. 


	12. Broken Shards

Chapter 12  
  
In the void, there were no illusions. No mirages.  
  
Only pure, unadultered experiance; images, actions, trapped within their black marble casing, responding to the touch of their owners. They played out, in linear time, crystal moments of the past hanging suspended in their pool of dark oil, until fingers brushed the surface and the drops began to chase eachother, living the moment, freeing the memory.  
  
A small boy watched as the sunlight pooled onto the shining surface of an immense floor.  
  
Specks of sand from footsteps taken outside glinted, golden.  
  
Gold was everywhere.  
  
There were no shadows here; they didn't dare intrude upon the honey- warm light that streamed through the pillars and splashed itself into a dazzling display of color upon the ground.  
  
Shadows played only on the boy's face; he looked tired, but happy.  
  
Yami couldn't see the boy's face.  
  
The shadows kept getting in the way.  
  
The golden scene, with its shining pillars and warmth and light pouring in from everywhere, seemed all at once to fold itself up and disappear silently into the darkness, like a piece of intricate origami gone horribly wrong. It went slowly, so as to prolong the sudden desperate fear that Yami would never see it again, and such was the feeling he had when the whole structure simply collapsed back into his own mind.  
  
Yami held the globe, his fingertips lightly poised over the bladed markings. The whole thing had lasted less than three seconds.  
  
"Will I ever see it again?" he asked, trembling, and he knew this was a stupid question, but the irrational feeling that he would never again be able to look upon that breathtakingly beautiful palace and the strangely familiar boy had overidden his extremes of logic.  
  
There was no reply. Yami looked around, feeling the heaviness of the globe on his lap. Would his dark alter ego have had time to run off before the brief moment it had taken Yami to view the memory? No. That would have been impossible...  
  
Yami no Ni Koe was on his knees, behind Yami. He was crouched over, and was clenching his head with both hands.  
  
Yami watched him. Was this another trick?  
  
Yami Ni looked up, saw that Yami was no longer reading the memory, and moved. Quick as lightning, the shadowy globe was in his hands. Yami Ni stood up, eyeing it, and breathing heavily.  
  
Stunned at the sheer speed of Yami Ni's movements, and concluding that he must be more tired than he had thought, Yami got up abruptly. "I demand that you return that to me!!" he shouted, and made a grab for it. Yami Ni held it out of his reach. "You cannot have it back," he panted; Yami noticed that he really seemed to be in pain, and the hand holding the globe was far from steady. Yami was afraid he would drop it. "Give it back, Ni Koe!"  
  
Yami Ni's agony didn't seem to have affected his facial skills; he smiled, viciously. "You don't need this. It is irrelevant to the task of re-combining our Souls." "Why?!" Yami cried, tortured by the thought of losing that golden memory. His hands were clenched at his sides, and his eyes were fixed, almost pleadingly, on the black sphere. Yami Ni steadied himself.  
  
"I... I cannot give it to you-" Yami's eyes blazed. "But why?! I have every right to reclaim what is mine!" he shouted, his gaze dropping from Yami Ni's outstretched hand to Yami Ni's eyes. So identical to his own. Yami thought he saw the answer there, and he faltered, for perhaps that first time in his life.  
  
Yami Ni slowly began backing away. Yami stepped forward, but Yami Ni's burdened hand shook and he fell back.  
  
"...Why?" asked Yami again, like a heartbroken child. He looked, once more, at the globe.  
  
Yami Ni dropped the memory. It fell and shattered onto the floor, a thousand pinpricks of obsidian shards spinning across the dusty stones of Yami's mind. The larger chunks lay, there, glittering.  
  
"We do not need it," said Yami no Ni Koe, firmly. Yami would almost have preferred him to have said it in a more threatened tone of voice, which would have given the broken globe more value. For if it had really put Yami Ni in pain, wouldn't it have been worth at least a potential danger? But Yami Ni had said it was useless. Yami didn't want to believe him.  
  
As his doppleganger abruptly left the room, Yami dropped to his knees in front of the shattered remains of the memory. He reached into the pile of what looked like broken marble and extracted a fair-sized chunk, which felt heavy and cool in his hand. It reflected his face just as clearly as the original had, when he tilted it at the right angle.  
  
But its deep, black surface gave him no consolation, now that it lay in pieces on the floor. There was no trace of gold or light in between any of the cracked, marble-like shards, no matter how long or hard he searched for them.  
  
Yami stared at the memory, the rubble strewn over his soul. It wasn't fair. It was his. It had been his, if only for those precious few seconds. And now the memory was fading from his mind, leaking from the broken sphere, and the most he could recall were the two objects that had been most prominent in the image; a boy, and a palace of light. Nothing more. He could not remember what either of them looked like, however hard he tried. Even the exact hue of the golden glow that he had percieved so much of while reading the memory was fast dimming.  
  
Yami raised his hand and thrust it deep into the pile, pushing his palm against the sharpened edges of the black shards. Obsidian dust ground into his skin; smears of red anger marred the glassy, once-smooth surface of the broken memory.  
  
He stayed that way for a few minutes, taking deep breaths, his head resting on his knees and his hand still forced in among the memory's remains.  
  
Although his hand couldn't actually be injured in the Soul Room, the results of his actions would soon begin to affect the other parts of his body, and he would end up feeling sick or exhausted. He removed his hand from the pile, which glittered at him, coldly, and sat back on his heels.  
  
Numb, he idly walked his fingers over to the fist-sized shard that he had discarded before plunging his hand into the memory's remains. He picked it up again, ignoring the tension that was dripping from his hand onto the floor. It was elongated, and sharp; Yami was lucky that this particular piece had not been in the pile during his little act of frusteration. His fingers traced the uneven contours where it had broken off the main globe.  
  
Greater than the sum of the whole... These shards, when put together in the right way, would once more play that golden image, that happy child. So if he and Yami Ni were a whole again, as he said, would that not unlock more of these memories? He would be complete. An unbroken Soul. He fingered the shard, thoughtfully.  
  
Maybe if he did what Yami no Ni Koe wanted, he would keep the rest of his memories intact. After all, they were his memories too... Or so he says, Yami reminded himself. He still didn't understand why Yami Ni had been so vehement about destroying this particular memory; at first he had seemed as eager as Yami to view it, but then something had happened... Whatever it was, Yami wasn't ready to forgive his alter ego in a hurry.  
  
He put the shard in his pocket, where it lay like an ungaurded piece of his soul.  
  
I can have answers... Or I can have my past.  
  
It was his choice.  
  
At least, that's what he would have liked to believe. 


	13. The City's Haunts at Night

Chapter 13  
  
It was freezing out.  
  
Yami was not used to the cold, and never had been for the last few millenia. He pinched his prickling arms through the thin fabric of his t- shirt, and wished that Yami no Ni Koe had had the sense to equip him with something more suited for insulating heat.  
  
While he walked, Yami made a mental list of questions he wanted to ask Yami Ni. It was an ample list. He wasn't entirely sure they would ever be answered, but it gave him a distraction with which to ignore the chill wind that was pressing frigidly against the back of his exposed neck. His breath hung, mistily, in front of his face.  
  
First of all, and he knew this was the least likely to be answered of all his questions, Yami wanted to know exactly who Yami no Ni Koe was and how he had come to be in his Soul Room in the first place. Yami wanted to know more about this 'soul re-aligning' arrangement that his dark counterpart had seemed so eager for Yami to agree to, and what the connection between the two was. What did they have in common, anyway?  
  
His memories took up a rather large amount of his list; why had Yami Ni destroyed his first one? And why had Yami Ni acted in such pain when exposed to it? There was some kind of secret behind that shattered globe, and Yami yearned to reveal it and Yami's enigmatic smile once and for all. He almost wanted to know to what boundaries his new partner's Shadow abilities extended, but he was fearful, ashamedly so, and decided to table the question until he knew more about Yami Ni's motives.  
  
Soon he began to wonder where he was going.  
  
As the stuff of night rose up to greet him, turning the looming buildings to his right into dark, towering obelisks, melting the empty street away into a river of blackness, Yami felt as if he were treading into unfamiliar territory. Darkness had once been his domain. But the Shadow Realm had a new ruler, a seemingly more experianced one, and more skilled in the Shadow abilities than Yami had ever remembered himself to be.  
  
His arm brushed a street lamp, and he jerked away, shocked by the unexpected coldness of the metal.  
  
Having a physical body was proving to be more trouble than it was worth. As a disembodied spirit, Yami had had nothing to worry about except getting his memories back and protecting his partner. Now he had to cope with unfamiliar temperature changes, no Shadow abilities, and a mysterious, ruthless presence lurking in the back of his mind.  
  
Curse that desert sand, Yami thought.  
  
"You're in denial. Can't you just accept the fact that it was you who released me?"  
  
Yami nearly walked into another street pole, such was his horror when he realized Yami Ni could and probably was reading his mental list of questions to himself.  
  
Yami Ni looked at Yami, steadily. "You make it seem as though I were a burden to you, Yami." Yami, feeling spyed on and violated, snapped "Yes, I know. You cannot possibly be a burden, because we need eachother. We are supposedly two sums of a whole- You need not tell me again." "At least you are catching on to the fact that we have much work to do," Yami Ni acknowledged, for entirely the wrong reasons. Yami opened his mouth to protest, but Yami Ni raised his finger.  
  
"We shall discuss it later."  
  
This dismissive evasion of Yami's questions made him absolutely furious. He wanted to get away from Yami Ni... As far away as possible... He would find some other way of retrieving his memories, if only it would grant him safe passage away from this lunatic forever...  
  
"Why are you so angry with me? I am only trying to help you/us..."  
  
"Stop!!" Yami cried. He crouched down on the cold, concrete sidewalk and held his head in his hands. "Stop talking to me!!"  
  
Yami Ni passed like a shadow through his mind. "As you wish," he sighed, and his voice was gone.  
  
He was still there, however, and no promise of silence would console Yami's fevered soul. Yami Ni was, alternatively, both courteous and abruptly intruding, brutal and understanding, powerful and submissive. The sheer number of characteristics that Yami no Ni Koe had attributed to himself was strangely horrifying, and yet... there was a grain of sorrow embedded deep within that darkened soul...  
  
Yami could not afford to feel sympathetic for Yami Ni. He was too immersed in his own plans, whether they included Yami or not; he was too mysterious, untouchable.  
  
Numb inside and out, Yami crept silently into the alcove of a small knick-knack store and lay down on the steps. The gritty surface of the cracked concrete was freezing to the bone, and Yami, for the first time in his limited collection of true experiances, felt utterly lost and alone and abandoned by the world. He didn't know what to do, or even what he was doing now. The stars overhead, older than he, offered no explanation for the situation he had suddenly found himself in, without warning or pause for thought.  
  
He slumped, cramming himself into the smallest amount of space he possibly could, every particle of his new body struggling to generate but the faintest pinprick of heat. The brick against his back was as cold as stone, and Yami felt as if he were turning into a statue, a cold and frozen monument that would be forever numbed to the world...  
  
Yami Ni cast a shadow of warmth, projected it into the tiny space Yami was lying in. "Shadows can do good things too, Yami..." a voice crooned, softly. "It all balances out, after a time... Like two equal weights on a scale, set to collapse on the tiniest instability, everything must have their opposite to survive..."  
  
Yami shifted in the unexpected heat, gratefully and sleepily. Was Yami Ni seeking forgiveness? Yami heard himself saying, rationally enough, "You may balance yourself out, Ni Koe... But where is the light to counter darkness?"  
  
"That is irrelevent," came the answer, on a breath of hot air, inaudible to the ears. Yami sank further into an exhausted slumber, and forgot all about the question and the others as he drifted into the suspension of the counsciousness; blacker than black and full of well-known textures and sounds, limitless, and fading the day's worries and troubles and thoughts into oblivion.  
  
Yugi Mutou shivered, in his cold attic bedroom. Someone, somewhere, was dreaming of darkness, and he knew, he knew that his own nighttime visions would consist of nothing save that dark dreamer's face; every single night, a haunt that would not rest until he shared his Soul with it once more... 


	14. A New Pawn

Chapter 14  
  
After a full school period spent flirting with Seto Kaiba, that ambitious, wealthy schoolmate of hers, and in the process ignoring Hiroto Honda, her annoying crush, Miho Nozaka is ready to call it a day's work.  
  
Purple hair glinting vivaciously and sassily in the sunlight, Miho, pretty little thing that she is, flitters away down the school steps; she has homework to do, and people to tease, and one musn't keep a full life like that waiting.  
  
Remembering that her parents are at work today, and that Honda, willing though he is, has to stay after school hours for fooling around with his friend (Katsuya Jonouchi, what a brainless moron, she thinks), Miho realizes she will have to take the bus home.  
  
She diverts her route and decides to take the short, dusty path behind the school. Overgrown with weeds, and eugh! beetles!! she resolves to make her way through it as quickly as possible.  
  
But no matter how fast she moves, no speed could make the object in the middle of the courtyard escape her attention.  
  
Unfortunately for her.  
  
She picks it up, the sunlight glinting off its polished surface having thrown a cord to her eye and pulled in her gaze. Gold shines its soft brilliance into her flushed face.  
  
A puzzle? she thinks.  
  
Intricate little thing. Shaped like a pyramid, its corners forming into streamlined edges that frame the intense color and structure of this strange artifact.  
  
Has she seen it before? One of Honda's friends had something like it, certainly... But this is different.  
  
It is roughly the size of her hand, larger. An eye stares into hers, unblinkingly. She touches it, fascinated.  
  
Something in her head snaps into place.  
  
She cries out and drops to the ground, but even this pain cannot unclench her fingers from her golden prize, her boxed light. Shadows reassemble in her mind.  
  
And when she stands, smiling and innocent, the puzzle still clasped to her breast, there is nothing, nothing in the world now, that can save her.  
  
Miho Nozaka runs off, her treasure in tow, prepared to relate to her friends and family the odd circumstances under which she found it. But perhaps it was not so odd after all. If we find a rusty bottlecap on the ground, is it so special?  
  
As she runs, the atmosphere shifts; for a fraction of a second, one might think they had seen the image of an eye superimposed onto Miho's young, unwrinkled brow.  
  
But who can you trust? It was, after all, merely an illusion. 


	15. Yami's First Dawn

Chapter 15  
  
"At this moment, lives are converging."  
  
"What?" Yami mumbled, opening gritty eyes and looking around blearily at his dismal surroundings. At first, he couldn't remember where he was or why he was there; in fact, he never had known the answer to the latter. He rubbed his face, shivered in the frosty sunlight. "What?" he asked again, more coherently.  
  
"Lives," Yami no Ni Koe repeated, absently. He stepped down into Yami's counscious mind. "Come. It is late. We have many things to accomplish."  
  
Yami was not normally a sarcastic person, but his last few days sharing a soul with Yami Ni were beginning to fray his frankness. "All your so-called accomplishments are starting to test my patience, Ni Koe," Yami growled, attempting to sit up. Dull pain embraced his back and shoulders; he winced.  
  
A passing pedestrian spotted Yami sitting in the alcove and looked over, alarmed. "Hey," the man said, trotting over to where Yami lay. "Are you all right?"  
  
Yami stared up at him, startled. He wasn't used to people just randomly coming up to him, concerned about his well-being.  
  
More to the point, he did not feel all right; in fact, he felt worse than any of his days previously spent with Yugi Mutou. His spine hurt from where he had it forced up against the brick wall, and he was unbelievably stiff.  
  
"I am fine," he said, in a voice healthy enough to make the man go away.  
  
To his relief, the man just nodded, smiled, and stepped back out onto the sidewalk, where he continued on his merry little life. Yami envied him.  
  
"Do not wish for his world. He is useless, in the grand scheme of things. We, however, have something far greater ahead of us," Yami Ni was whispering into his ear. Yami shook his head, as if to rid it of some unwanted pest. "You are arrogant," was all he said. He imagined he felt a small puff of irritation from the place in his head where Yami Ni was sitting.  
  
"I cannot stand," Yami said to his partner, irritably; he resented this state of helplessness. Yami Ni made matters worse by laughing, and then making a comment about the limitations of the human body. Yami supposed it was in order to get back at him for not taking Yami Ni's high- and-mighty statement about destiny into deeper consideration.  
  
With Yami Ni's help, however, Yami managed to struggle to his feet, leaning against the wall for balance. It was morning, and the people, pale in the early light, looked undercooked and worn down. Yami wondered if he looked like that, now.  
  
"It would do you well to take a shower," a voice hissed meaningfully at him. Yami bristled. "I would advise you to keep your hygenic suggestions to yourself," he grumbled, sliding out into the sidewalk and trying to concentrate on not collapsing. He couldn't believe the sudden pointlessness of their conversations. Perhaps Yami Ni was just as pathetic as everyone else seemed to be in the morning.  
  
Yami walked and walked, still freezing but too proud to ask Yami Ni for another brief spell of warmth. Yami Ni could probably hear his thoughts anyway, and was just waiting for Yami to give in and beg his aid.  
  
Someone yelled at him, "Oi!! It's like, minus thirteen degrees out here!!" Yami turned. The person was standing on the other side of the street, waving at him. Judging by the outfit, it was undoubtably a girl. "You should, like, get something warmer on!" the girl shouted.  
  
Uncomfortable, Yami wished that she would just come across the street and talk to him in a more civilized manner; then the rising sunlight moved a few degrees to the right, and something flashed and caught his eye.  
  
The girl was wearing the Millenium Puzzle. 


	16. Lost Connections

Chapter 16  
  
Yugi snuck quietly out of the house, steathily, in order not to disturb his grandfather.  
  
He knew his gaurdian probably didn't expect him to go to school today, and he wasn't. He was going on a long walk; his first truly lonely walk. He had stuck a Post-It note onto the cash register, explaining where he was going and when he could be expected to return, so Sugoroku wouldn't worry too much about him.  
  
Closing the door silently behind him, Yugi turned to face the pale, renewed sun, the horizon once more giving birth to a new day and a fresh start. Yugi didn't want a fresh start. He wanted the past back.  
  
The air was windless but frigid; luckily, Yugi had had the foresight to grab his jacket on the way out. He had forgotten his gloves, though, so he stuck his hands in his pockets and set out towards the bus station.  
  
Once there, he paid for his ticket, and rode his regular route to Domino High, just as he did every day. The experiance of going through this seemingly normal routine, without Yami, triggered the loss and pain Yugi had been attempting to forget, ever since they had split. Two days ago; yet it seemed, as the loss of a loved one tends to do, like much more.  
  
Yugi succumbed to the lulling, gentle motion of the bus, and almost fell asleep before he was jerked into awareness by the speakers loudly announcing his destination. He stumbled off the car, brushing past the bright and early people of the morning, and headed towards the school. Ignoring his other classmates, who were milling around on the lawn or disappearing into the double doored entrance, Yugi slipped away to the back of the building.  
  
The courtyard was deserted. The dirt was frozen, rock hard, under Yugi's sneakers. He peered around.  
  
The Puzzle was no longer there.  
  
He should have known. Nothing within a mile radius of any high school got left around without being stolen or otherwise removed from its current location. And the Puzzle had always appeared to be something of value; it looked to be made of solid gold! No, Yugi would have been surprised if it hadn't been stolen.  
  
Yugi searched the thick growth of weeds sprouting from the side of the building, just to make sure. He came up with nothing. Not even the bits of chain that had fallen all over the ground were there.  
  
The Puzzle had been the last connection between him and Yami. And now it was gone forever.  
  
Tears ran down Yugi's face. He felt angry, and lonely, and stupid, and helpless. He would have sat down and had a good cry, but it seemed even the elements wanted to prevent him from doing that; it was freezing cold, and it looked about to rain.  
  
So he turned away from that place, which would forever be imprinted in his mind, and turned to leave the courtyard.  
  
Yami probably belonged to someone else, now that he had left Yugi. Someone else had taken the Puzzle; did that mean Yami would share a Soul room with them, now?  
  
The thought couldn't have struck at a worse time; Yugi broke down. He collapsed onto the ground, regardless of its relatively cold and unbreakable surface, and cried and cried and cried.  
  
Did his sorrow resonate with his former partner? Was Yami feeling the same way?... 


	17. The Higher They Are

Chapter 17  
  
Yami was currently attempting to navigate the street, which was rapidly filling up with automobiles.  
  
The girl was beginning to walk away. Yami panicked, not having ever been faced with a situation like this before. Hideous monsters, ancient murderers, and dark magic he could face; but the traffic of the city at rush hour was another thing altogether. This was understandable, if one were to consider Yami's position; Domino City was still a formidable place for a person who had previously lived their entire lives inside a pyramid shaped box hung around someone's neck.  
  
"She is unimportant!" Yami no Ni Koe snapped. "Why must you persue objects of nostalgia when we have other tasks to-" "Be silent!!" Yami interuppted, and, in a split-second decision born of instincts that had never failed him before, Yami ran across the street.  
  
Horns blared and brakes squealed as Yami swiftly dodged bumpers that would have otherwise probably broken his hip. People leaned out of their cars in astonishment as the odd, slender youth stepped nimbly up onto the curb at the opposite end of the street, unharmed.  
  
The girl had watched this with a horrified but fascinated gaze; she was no doubt wondering why such a handsome stranger would take all this trouble to get to her. Behind him, traffic resumed again, but slower; nerves had been shattered and peace of mind violated. Yami couldn't bother with them at all, though.  
  
Miho stared as Yami came towards her. She looked poised to run away at any moment, but as he came nearer her face broke into a wide smile. Charmingly, she cocked her head, but there was something false behind that cheerful facade.  
  
"Why, you're Yugi Mutou, aren't you?" she asked, brightly. "You're in Class B, with Honda, right? He's told me some pretty wild stuff about you..."  
  
Yami wasn't listening; he was staring at the object dangling from around the girl's neck. No longer fixed to a chain of sturdy links, the Puzzle now hung from a stout plastic cord, shorter than the chain had been. The cord was bright pink.  
  
Miho stopped talking as she noticed Yami was preoccupied elsewhere. She looked at him, then to where his attention was fixed. She spun away in horror. "You pervert!!" she squealed. Yami looked at her face, startled. "I am sorry," he apologized awkwardly, not knowing what modern rule of ettiquette he had broken this time. He tried, in vain, to think of a way for the girl to give up her newly aquired posession. Yami no Ni Koe, of course, would be no help at all.  
  
"Don't touch me!!" Miho was shrieking, face flushed. Several people were beginning to stare. "I have no wish to touch you," Yami said, bemused by the girl's peculiar behaviour. "I only wish that-"  
  
"Shut up! You're not Yugi!! I was mistaken- You're someone completely different!" Miho was babbling at this point, clutching the Puzzle to her chest. Yami tried to avert his eyes, as he reasoned that this would only upset the girl more. Her screams were attracting a crowd.  
  
"Wait," Yami finally said, in desperation. "Listen to me. I need that Puzzle. I will give you... I will give you whatever you want for it. What services do you require?" Miho stopped babbling. "What?" she asked. "Services. I am offering my services in return for that object you hold in your hands. It-"  
  
"You disgusting lunatic!!" Miho screeched; and in a moment she had run off down the sidewalk, followed by the gaze of fifteen curious bystanders. When she disappeared around the corner of a building, however, their stares returned to Yami.  
  
Bewildered, Yami began following her, but someone put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't you even think about it, mister," a gruff voice said. "Ya wanna get arrested for molestin' a young girl? Jeez... Punks these days..."  
  
The entertainment over, the crowd began to drift away. Yami wanted to scream at them.  
  
"You draw far too much attention to our/yourself," Yami no Ni Koe chastened him, as Yami sat down on a nearby bench. The metal numbed his skin through his jeans. "I did nothing wrong," Yami said, shaken by the hectic ordeal. He needed Yugi back. In this strange world, Yugi represented order, the banishment of chaos. Without him, Yami was lost. He admitted this, without reluctance.  
  
Yami Ni was listening to his thoughts. "We do not need him! Must I tell you again?!" "No," Yami responded indifferently. "And I realize it was purely a rhetorical statement."  
  
He felt Yami Ni sulking in his head. Yami suddenly felt very tired, and the pangs of hunger, which he had learned of from Yugi but never actually experianced. It was not a pleasant sensation.  
  
"Do you require nourishment?" Yami Ni suddenly spoke up. "If you let me, I would be able to aquire something for your consumption." Yami thought about this for a moment, and was horrified by what kind of consequences might arise from letting Yami Ni handle the situation. He stood up from the bench.  
  
"No," he said loudly, into his Soul Room. "I know what your idea of 'nourishment' is. You would find a victim and deprive them of their soul, is that not true? I cannot let you do that!" "And why not?" Yami no Ni Koe countered, with a sly look on his face that said he would do whatever he wanted, regardless of Yami's objections.  
  
"They are innocents, Ni Koe. How can you even think to drag them into our private wars?" If Yami were more the flamboyant type, he would have flung out his arms for emphasis. "That is not what the Shadow Games were meant for! It is only the evil, and the corrupted, that are meant to succumb to the penalty games. How can you claim to be the true master of the Shadow Realm if you do not play by the rules?"  
  
Yami Ni chuckled darkly. The sound sent Yami's skin prickling. "Naive Yami. So old, yet so ignorant of the ways of that from which he was born." He looked up, his eyes shadowed by the fall of his hair. "Born in darkness, died in darkness. We are of the dark, and you must know that we make our own Rules for others to play by."  
  
Yami gaped at his alter ego, at a loss for words. What could he say? He was no longer in charge. It was this dark personage that seemed to know everything, and Yami's authority was no more. It was a sudden drop into the unknown. Yugi's friend Anzu had once said something... What was it? 'The higher they are, the higher they'll fall...'  
  
Submission would not be an easy thing for Yami to adapt to. But he knew that if he were to oppose Yami no Ni Koe, he might lose everything. And if he did what Yami Ni wanted for the time being, perhaps he would get some of his old life back... All he would have to do was swallow his pride for a while, and convince Yami no Ni Koe that Yami was on his side. Maybe then, everything would work out...  
  
Yes. That would be his decision. And he kept by it, even as he heard Yami Ni's exhale of triumph.  
  
As if to seal his promise, he fingered the tiny shard of memory, still nestled in his pocket... 


	18. Dark Revelations

Chapter 18  
  
When Miho arrived for classes that morning, an odd sight met her eyes.  
  
Having narrowly escaped a pervert on the sidewalk, Miho had hurried straight to school, pausing only to re-adjust the cord around her neck to prevent it from cutting into her smooth, soft neck.  
  
She walked into the courtyard at the back of the building, which was her customary shortcut, and was puzzled by a series of deep, heartfelt sobs. She peeked around the corner.  
  
Yugi Mutou was lying on his side, with no bookbag and no Puzzle. Miho guiltily fingered the cord around her neck; she was uncomfortably aware that Yugi might mistake her little artifact for his Puzzle, but she was certain that she could convince him that they were not the same thing. She had no words formed in her mind, but her resolve was absolute. Something in her head was telling her that her neckwear and Yugi's Puzzle were two entirely different objects.  
  
Miho stared cautiously out at the boy crying into the ground. What should she do?  
  
The answer came surprisingly easily; take a detour.  
  
So Miho left Yugi in the courtyard, and slunk into school through the east entrance instead. She felt cheerful and optimistic; today was another big day, and Kaiba would be there waiting.  
  
Yugi picked himself off the ground, unaware that anyone had been watching him, and wiped his eyes. Despite the good two or three minutes he had been lying there, he felt even worse than he had before. He had gotten the sudden feeling that they were all in deep trouble, and nobody would be able to save them...  
  
Joints aching from the frost that had seeped into his bones, Yugi stood up, trembling with the aftermath of a good long cry. He supposed he might as well go home now, and try and forget as much as possible... A futile task, he knew, but one that might keep his mind off things.  
  
He somehow found himself outside the Game Corner, without quite knowing exactly how his feet had gotten him there.  
  
Quietly, he stepped inside and closed the door. He took the Post-It note off the cash register, unread, and crammed it into his pocket. His grandfather was still asleep.  
  
Safely shut away in his room, Yugi crawled into bed and tried, without success, to fall asleep.  
  
Elsewhere, his former partner attempted to discuss the whereabouts of the nearest eating establishment with a bewildered pedestrian on her way to work.  
  
"A- a what? A resturaunt? That's what you meant, isn't it?" asked the poor woman, glancing worriedly at the strange young man standing before her. Yami gave her a piercing look. "Yes. That is what I meant," he agreed, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. "Tell me where the nearest location is."  
  
Stammering, the woman hurriedly gave Yami directions to a Burger World that was just down the street. She then quickly walked off, pausing every now and then to gaze back at Yami with a troubled look on her face. Clearly, the encounter had left her somewhat shaken.  
  
"You have no monetary units. How are you going to purchase sustenance?" Yami no Ni Koe inquired, with raised eyebrows. Yami began walking down the sidewalk. "Perhaps you could solve that obstacle, Ni Koe," he replied, harmlessly enough. "Did you not say that shadows enjoy manipulating matter? Why don't you just pull a few bills of yen out of the air?"  
  
Yami Ni frowned. "Shadows cannot create or destroy matter so easily. Converting particles... Transferring them elsewhere... Such are the main functions of the Shadow abilities."  
  
If he had not promised himself that he would listen to what Ni Koe had to say, Yami would have probably retorted with a statement regarding the limitations of the Shadow abilities that Yami Ni hadn't told him about, but he kept his words to himself.  
  
But Yami Ni was right. Where was he going to get the money?  
  
He worried about this while casually strolling towards the glass doors of the Burger World. He really didn't want to have to ask for Yami Ni's help, because he was afraid of what his dark counterpart might do. People were in danger, and whatever happened, he, Yami, would be accountable.  
  
On the other hand, he hadn't eaten in almost two days. Before this, he had never had to. And now he was trapped within the boundaries of the physical realm, which were closer and far more than he had thought.  
  
Finally, he admitted to himself that he had absolutely no idea what to do next, and stopped just outside the perimeter of the Burger World's parking lot. Hungry, cold, tired and lost, Yami stood there, smelling the unfamiliar odours of the city and the rather more appetizing ones emitting from the building in front of him. The sudden sensation of smell was overwhelming, and Yami leaned into it, imagining he could taste the scent of whatever was cooking inside, and relishing the sheer novelty of it. He laughed.  
  
"When you are finished fooling around, I believe I can help you aquire some money," Yami Ni told him, briskly. "If you do not mind stealing, that is; although I prefer to think of it as a permanent exchange of-" "I do not mind," Yami interuppted, eager to find a place to rest and fill his stomach. Yami Ni smiled, and nodded. "Very well, then. Let the exchange take place."  
  
Yami was watching a short, chubby man in a business suit trotting down the street in the opposite direction of the traffic. As he watched, he felt something somewhere compress; and in a moment, he felt a lump of something pressing against his thigh.  
  
He glanced, uneasily, at the man; he seemed not to have noticed anything, as he didn't break his stride and soon vanished from Yami's view behind a large building. Yami took the object out of his pocket. It was rectangular, dark and firm, and it had a number of small plastic cards tucked into it. There was also a thick was of yen nestled under one flap.  
  
Gratefully, Yami discreetly slid the wallet back into his pocket. It seemed Yami Ni had his uses after all; though he was not quite as wise in the ways of the modern world as Yugi, he was powerful and sly enough to get Yami through the day. Yami still wondered if having Yami Ni around all the time was going to be worth it, though.  
  
Yami Ni said nothing as the two, disguised as one, slipped into the fast food resturaunt. The smells were thicker here; Yami breathed in, hungrily. Bright flourescent lights neutralized the dim sunlight outdoors, and plastic booths lined the walls. There was a profound sense of hopelessness here; in the people, sadly eating their dripping hamburgers, picking aimlessly through their fries, as if searching for meaning in their lives; and the plastic enviroment, which seemed to be trying to offer something more to the organic world. Both were failing, but neither were giving up.  
  
Yami was unaware of this modern affliction, and sat down in one of the booths. He waited, expectantly. Presently, a pretty young waitress appeared at his table, and pleasantly asked him hellocanItakeyourorderplease?  
  
"Yes," said Yami, blandly. He looked at her. She seemed to be waiting for something. "HellocanItakeyourorderplease?" she repeated, with an indetectable amount of anxiety growing in her voice. She was obviously new, and although she had gotten her hellocanItakeyourorderplease?s and her plastic smiles down perfectly, she was unprepared for strange customers such as Yami.  
  
Eventually, Yami got the hint. "I want..." That was as far as he had gotten before he realized that he had no idea what sort of food they served at this Burger World establishment.  
  
Yami and the waitress stared at eachother, panicked. Both of them were new to this situation. One of them was going to have to make the first move.  
  
Because Yami was an extremely difficult person to stare down, the waitress wandered off to find a menu for "the weird guy sitting at table twelve." Contented with the low noise level of the room, and enjoying the vaugely urgent hustling and bustling of the late morning workers who were in need of a quick pick-me-up, Yami settled back in the hard, brittle seat and closed his eyes.  
  
Presently, the waitress returned with his menu. "HereyougosirI'llbebackinaminutetotakeyourorder!" she said brightly, to nothing. Yami took the laminated sheet of paper from her, and as he did, his fingers brushed hers...  
  
Yami could see nothing for what seemed like a few seconds.  
  
When he opened his eyes, the waitress was still there. But there was something wrong with her eyes.  
  
Before he could make out exactly what seemed so out of place, the waitress had thrown him a bright little grin identical to the one she had given him three seconds ago, and flittered through a pair of double doors from which tantalizing odours could be distinguished. But Yami was no longer thinking of his stomach.  
  
"I cannot let you go through with this, Ni Koe."  
  
"What do you mean? Do you plan to starve me as well?" The answer was morbidly cheerful. "Besides, I only took part of her soul. I can sustain myself on less..."  
  
"You have lived for thousands of years, or so you claim, and you have never been fed souls before."  
  
"That is untrue." Yami Ni grinned, his eyes gleaming. "Do you not recall the Shadow Games you used to play?"  
  
"That means nothing. It is in the past."  
  
"You are seeking the past. And besides..." Yami Ni licked his lips, and resumed smiling at Yami's hunted expression, "I feasted on the souls that lost to the penalty games."  
  
Yami didn't notice when the waitress came back, and didn't respond to her persuasive questions regarding his order and the prohibition against loitering.  
  
"Penalty games?..."  
  
The souls he had banished...  
  
Yami felt light-headed. He couldn't think clearly. He was on the verge of an awful, awful truth, and his mind was forming a defensive shield around the breakthrough. He forced it away. "But..."  
  
Yami Ni laughed. "But what, indeed?"  
  
Yami Ni cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes. Yami didn't meet his gaze.  
  
"I would not consider the matter so forcefully, Yami... After all, it was I all along who had been persuading you into playing the Shadow Games in the first place. You never would have fed me if I hadn't taken it upon myself to do so..."  
  
There was a whirlwind of motion. Someone was screaming.  
  
Someone had their hands over their ears. Someone was reaching for the phone... Someone was running out the door...  
  
Yami was sitting in a resturant filled with empty, soulless bodies. 


	19. The Harder They Fall

Chapter 19  
  
A dark, lithe shadow ran down the length of the long stretch of abandoned apartment buildings, ducking under fire escapes and avoiding the sunlight as much as possible.  
  
It was stumbling as it ran, and its footsteps grew more and more uneven until finally the figure collapsed against the ruined side of one of the structures, panting. Suddenly, the darkened figure arched its back, sharply, and retched onto the worn and filth ground. The person coughed and spluttered, and then the row of condemned apartment houses stood silent and foreboding once again.  
  
Yami wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned against the wall, dry sobbing, and trembling so hard he almost feared he would never be able to stop.  
  
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and it left him shaken to the very core of his being. He wasn't used to this. He couldn't take it anymore. Nobody, in their entire lives, should have had to experiance what he had in less than three days. It would have killed them. Yami wanted it to have killed him now.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe appeared in the labryinth of his mind. "Have you had enough?" he asked coldly.  
  
In the real world, Yami shuddered and crouched on the ground, his forehead brushing the ground and his hands clutching his head. "Go away..." he sobbed, oblivious to the fact that he was speaking the words out loud. "Leave me be..."  
  
Yami Ni looked at him without a trace of pity on his mirrored face. "I did what I could, under the circumstances," he said, staring very hard at Yami as he spoke. "And never again..."  
  
Yami's head jerked forward as Yami Ni mentally kicked him in the side. His breathing doubled in speed as he gasped, his mind ringing.  
  
Yami Ni finished his sentence as he watched Yami coughing on the floor of the Soul Room. "...access the Shadow abilities in such an uncontrolled state of mind."  
  
Yami stared at his alter ego in shock and disbelief. "You struck me." Yami Ni glared, but stayed silent. "I can't believe it. You... you hit your own partner- What- What kind of-" Yami stopped himself before the question could turn itself into a stream of babbling nonsense.  
  
He dragged himself up to a sitting position. Yami Ni's sharp eyes were focused on his every feeble action. "I am not your servant," Yami told him, and sounding much more assertive than he felt. Of course, Yami Ni would sense this, and see right through him. Yami Ni chuckled, ruefully, which proved it.  
  
"You caused quite a commotion back there, Yami," his hated alter ego smiled. "Twenty three souls lost... I shall feast tonight..."  
  
Yami didn't exactly understand the exact events of the last two hours. Feeling he had nothing to lose except his pride, which he had probably lost most of long ago, Yami wearily asked Yami Ni what had happened.  
  
Apparently, as Yami Ni related, Yami had tapped into some of his latent Shadow abilities during his moment of what Yami Ni referred to as 'your shock of snapping out of denial', resulting in the soul removal of every single person in the resturant.  
  
He said it as if he were reciting the weather.  
  
Yami bowed his head and it seemed to him as if he could drown himself in the stench of his own guilt. All his fault... He had lost control for a second, and he had murdered- Yes, murdered- a signifigant number of innocent bystanders. On top of that, the authorities were probably after him now.  
  
Then he thought of the waitress, the pretty, kind waitress at the resturant, and the waitress reminded him of when Yugi's friend Anzu had gotten a job as a waitress at Burger World, and remembering the waitress had reminded him of Anzu and he thought of the waitress' dead dead eyes and how horrible it had been and the two waitresses got mixed up in his mind and he wanted to die...  
  
He was so miserable he almost didn't catch Yami Ni gloating, "Everyone deserves a penalty game sooner or later... Our job is merely to speed them along."  
  
At that moment, Yami hated his alter ego with more passion than he had ever remembered having felt before.  
  
He would have sprung up and tried to strangle Yami Ni, but the latter had his attention focused elsewhere; and it would have been a stupid thing to do, anyway. Yami Ni put out a foot and stepped on something laying on the floor, just to Yami's right. "What's this?"  
  
Yami Ni picked it up, and Yami would have given anything for him not to have seen it in the first place.  
  
It was the black memory shard.  
  
It must have rolled out of my pocket, Yami thought frantically. No... He is touching it... In Yami's current state of mind, anything Yami Ni touched would somehow become corrupt and tainted. Yami Ni was holding the shard up to the dimming light of Yami's Soul Room, commenting. "Interesting... A frgament from your first unlocked memory, isn't it?" Yami Ni held it up between two slender fingertips. He smiled, which was what Yami had been fearing. "I am afraid it is of no use to us."  
  
Yami couldn't say anything. He watched as Yami no Ni Koe clenched the shard until it had been squeezed out of existance, forever resting in that dark place in his soul that he would never be able to reach, no matter how hard he tried.  
  
"What do you want me to do," Yami said, dully, the words following one after the other in seemingly no particular order. Yami Ni looked down at him. "What?"  
  
"What do you want me to do?" Yami repeated. "I am lost. I am out of control. I am trapped here..." He gestured, indifferently, to his dismal surroundings, a description which applied to both worlds. "I am helpless, and I have no more hope. I have killed, and it does not matter who compelled me to do it. You said you needed me... So take me. Do what you want. I do not care any longer." And he didn't. He looked away, at the wall.  
  
The faintest ghost of a smile passed through Yami no Ni Koe's lips. To Yami's surprise, he bent down until their faces were at an even height.  
  
Yami stared at his reflection.  
  
He was so lonely... So miserable... Born in darkness, died in darkness, lost in darkness. Neither of them would ever get out, and they were both there to stay. Yami saw the truth in eyes that were his; deep, haunted eyes, eyes that had seen too much, lived too long...  
  
Yami reached up and traced the contours of his own face. It was his. Exactly the same.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe closed his eyes in response to Yami's fingers brushing his cheek. "You see," he whispered, soothingly, "there are no real differences. There are only shadows..."  
  
Yami. Yami Ni... Yami no... Yami no koe... No ni koe...  
  
It was all meaningless to the both of them, now. 


	20. Soup

Chapter 20  
  
The following morning finds Miho Nozaka in a bit of an odd mood.  
  
She feels queasy inside, and things buzz continually in her ear. She doesn't suppose she feels well. Her mother takes her temperature and finds that her daughter has a fever, so she sends Miho to bed.  
  
While lying on a pillow composed mainly of small stuffed animals, Miho fingers the golden pyramid that hangs around her neck. Nothing has been able to compel her to take it off; she is strangely attracted to it, somehow.  
  
She lifts the pyramid up to her forehead and presses it gently against her fevered skin. The metal is cool against her flesh. She holds it there for a minute or two longer, then slowly lowers it.  
  
A gold eye is imprinted where she had pressed the Puzzle; a second or two more and it fades from view.  
  
She feels distinctly unwell. She is not even sure it is a fever she is suffering from; the disease goes further than that, infecting something deeper within her. She struggles up off her pillow, small Pikachu and Beanie Baby plushies dripping off the sides of the bed as she moves.  
  
She pads downstairs. Her mother is in the kitchen, preparing to go to work.  
  
"Why, what do you think you're doing out of bed, young lady?" Mrs. Nozaka exclaims, looking up from her briefcase. She stares at her daughter. There is something strange about her eyes. "You look very unwell..."  
  
Miho steps the last few feet to her mother, and places one cold hand on her mother's wrist.  
  
She blinks, as if she had gone blind for a few seconds.  
  
Miho's mother opens her mouth, but no words come out. The symbol of an eye appears for a fraction of a moment on her forehead; then it, too, blends into the fleshy color of her skin.  
  
Mother and daughter look at eachother, with the same eyes. Miho shakes her head.  
  
"I don't feel very well... Can I make myself some soup?" she asks Mrs. Nozaka. Her mother nods, in a daze. Miho moves, in slow motion, over to the cupboard. She is doomed, and so is her mother.  
  
"Do we have any chicken noodle left, mom?" "I'm afraid your father ate the last of it... We have cream of tomato." "Euk. Gross."  
  
And, as if nothing had ever happened, Mrs. Nozaka packs up her briefcase and leaves the house, calling goodbye to her daughter as she leaves.  
  
This is the last time Miho will ever see her mother again. But by the time she realizes it, she will probably be in the same state.  
  
She digs through the cutlery in search of a spoon. She is feeling better already. 


	21. Mind Flood

Chapter 21  
  
Yugi awoke abruptly.  
  
His heart was clenched tight in his chest with horror. Something had happened. Something had happened to Yami.  
  
Breathing fast, Yugi flipped over the side of the bed and pelted downstairs. He had been sleeping in his clothes, so there was no need to waste time getting changed. Sugoroku was asleep at this time of the morning, as usual, but Yugi didn't have time to write another Post-It note. At least he remembered to close the door softly behind him as he rushed outside.  
  
The air was snapping brittlely in his face as he stood on the front steps of the Game Corner, whipping his eyes frantically back and forth across the grey landscape that the city had become during the first few nights of winter.  
  
He stared out into the cracked tarmac surrounding his home. Dead leaves skittered by, their skins dry and cracked. The city was a wasteland, here under this cold, sunless sky, and all of it- buildings, cars, people- were spiralling downwards into some unknown horror. The wind mimicked this gruesome pattern, as it curled around Yugi's ankles and blew leaves into continuous circles above his head.  
  
Domino City lay there like a dying grey animal, immobile, and doomed.  
  
Yugi gazed out at the horizon through the buildings. Here goes nothing... he thought, not knowing why, and with that he ran towards the downtown district, with the strange and terrible feeling that he was never coming back.  
  
In the center of the shadows surrounding the city, two minds sat at the eye of the storm.  
  
"It is not a completely instantaneous transition... But I assure you, soon our souls will have combined seamlessly. All it takes is time..." Yami Ni paused in his speech to smile, with a bright gleam in his eye, "and energy." He paused again. "Lots of energy."  
  
"Where are we going to find this energy?" Yami asked him, curiously. They were sitting in one of the condemned apartment buildings that Yami had fled to after the disaster of the Burger World resturaunt. Yami Ni's eye glinted at Yami's question, but he didn't answer. Yami didn't repeat himself, either. He had stepped down, accepted his position. He felt numb. Let Yami Ni take care of things, he thought dispassionately.  
  
He had come to realize that he and Yami Ni were, in fact, very much alike. Yugi Mutou had been nothing at all like either of them. Yugi was shy, sensitive and kind, and Yami had been none of those things. He began to wonder what had attracted Yugi as a host to him in the first place.  
  
But Yami no Ni Koe was the perfect soul match. He would be able to help Yami, and Yami would be only too willing to return the favour. He was in Yami Ni's debt. Together, they would be more than the sum of their parts.  
  
"If you want something from me... You must do to yourself what you did to Seto Kaiba," Yami Ni was saying, staring hard at Yami.  
  
"What is that?"  
  
"Open your mind..."  
  
Shadows swirled the dust around Yami Ni's feet. In the darkness, his violet eyes seemed almost to be glowing. He knelt down in front of Yami, as he had the first time Yami had given up all resistance. There was to be no resistance, if this were to work.  
  
Break all barriers surrounding your mind...  
  
Yami stared submissively into Yami no Ni Koe's face, his own wild eyes tamed. Yami Ni smiled, slightly.  
  
Trust anything you see...  
  
Placing two hands on either side of Yami's head, Yami Ni seemed to focus, and the shadows appeared to bend inwards to center on Yami's face. Like a needle. Like a funnel.  
  
But over anything, trust me.  
  
Yami Ni leaned in close. His breath stirred Yami's bangs. Yami felt his mind grow blank, and tried to make the blankness go deeper, to clear everything from his mind...  
  
Whiteness.  
  
And following that vaccum...  
  
Blackness.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe's thoughts were spilling into Yami's mind. They rushed down the corridors of his soul, swirling and eddying about, lapping at his legs. Yami flinched; wherever the intangible substance touched him, he grew numb. Yami Ni's hands pressed, firmly, against his temples.  
  
Destroy your defenses... Yami Ni whispered inaudibly into his ear.  
  
Unlock your soul doors... Shatter your mind...  
  
Do it for me.  
  
Yami shivered, and thought nothing for himself.  
  
Do it for us.  
  
Things were seeping out of the Stone Door from which Yami no Ni Koe had first appeared. Liquid in appearance, they flowed over the floor, sinking into every crack of Yami's dry Soul Room.  
  
Yami's shoulders heaved; he shuddered. Yami Ni's grip hardened.  
  
A black memory globe fell from the ceiling and landed in the stream of Yami Ni's mind flood. It sank underneath the surface, and when it reappeared, riding the current, the bladed inscriptions that were once carved upon it had been completely wiped clean. It was now a perfectly smooth, dark sphere.  
  
Yami's body jolted, and his eyes flashed open.  
  
In the real world, his physical body was mimicking his soul self's every move.  
  
Yami Ni tightened his grip even further, and when Yami began pulling his head back from the hands at his temples, Yami Ni dug his fingers into Yami's hair and jerked it back to its original position. Yami moaned.  
  
More black marbles dropped into the stream, vanished, and bobbed up smooth and round. Every time this happened, Yami would try to twist out of Yami Ni's hold, and his movements became more and more violent with every memory sphere that was destroyed. In response, Yami Ni would always force him to stay still by yanking his hair.  
  
Shadows met with shadows. Their collisions shook the Soul Room, sending what little dust motes that remained scattering invisibly into the air. Small chunks of debris were beginning to fly off the walls; it seemed as though Yami's mind would blow apart at any second.  
  
They are not part of our mind. They are merely obstacles.  
  
The walls mean nothing, and the only price to pay for getting rid of them is pain.  
  
Yami whimpered, very softly, and his chest heaved as Yami Ni once again forced his head up.  
  
Open your mind and free your soul...  
  
Yami was no longer in control of his actions. Yami Ni wasn't, either. Both were trapped in a second of time, with Yami Ni's thoughts and emotions and essence swirling around their waists and shadows contacting eachother with the force of bombs above, and all through the room there was the sound of shattering masonry.  
  
Yami could see into Yami Ni's mind...  
  
A small child, born in darkness, raised in darkness, played in darkness, lost and died in those thick shadows...  
  
Never having seen the light of the world, the child ran about doing what the shadows did best; raised in darkness, raised by darkness. Not seeking, only hunting, and he was much younger than the corridors through which he played. Much younger; a period of light and gold younger. His only world was one made of cruelty and ebony air, and the only thing he knew how to do, every day, from the moment of his conception, was to play games.  
  
And so he played.  
  
That was you? Yami heard himself think, loud as a foghorn and soft as the breeze.  
  
That was us, Yami Ni replied.  
  
Yami looked on in confusion as the dark child ran, slender and wiry. He seemed familiar, but something was missing from the scene. Something he couldn't remember... He had known, but he no longer did...  
  
Focussss, Yami Ni hissed.  
  
More memories, more thoughts and emotions, filled Yami's mind.  
  
Games.  
  
Shadows.  
  
He watched the child age. The darkness was the same.  
  
Where are my memories?  
  
These are our memories.  
  
Yes, but...  
  
There was something missing. Yami didn't know what it was.  
  
But I once had a memory...  
  
We share the same memories. Your memories are mine, and vice versa. There are no individualities.  
  
But you...  
  
No.  
  
Something is wrong.  
  
Residue... But... Yami no Ni Koe destroyed something, didn't he? remarked the dry bit, the last part of Yami that wasn't saturated with Yami Ni's flooded soul. Yami felt his thoughts wading through what seemed like quicksand.  
  
Something fell into the stream of Yami Ni's mind current and promptly dissolved.  
  
Yami blinked.  
  
Yami remembered darkness... And nothing else.  
  
Yami smiled, coldly, and Yami smiled back.  
  
Somewhere, in a place that never existed, a small boy stood in the middle of a golden palace, and then both images were lost forever in the flood. 


	22. Shadowed Eyes

Chapter 22  
  
Yugi ran down the sidewalk, each breath cutting his lungs as the wind sliced brutally through the air. His throat felt raw, and his neglecting to bring along a pair of gloves was proving to be a mistake.  
  
He was beginning to realize that just because he could sense whether Yami was in trouble didn't mean that he could pinpoint his current location.  
  
But there was something else in the frosty winter air that was leading him. A trace of something... Like a dark vein streaking through the current of the wind. Intangible, and yet he could still use it as his guide. He continued to follow it, past the tall office blocks with their towers of concrete and steel.  
  
It occurred to Yugi that having his friends around to help him might have been a good idea. But where had they been when he had lost Yami? Carrying on with their own lives? Ignoring his plight? Would they- Could they do that?  
  
He shook his head angrily as he pounded down the street. He was being so inconsiderate. Why should he drag them into his own pathetic life? If he couldn't be happy without Yami, that wasn't their problem.  
  
Maybe I'm just paranoid. Maybe I'm just bothering Yami for no reason... Maybe I'm just selfish... Yugi thought erratically, panting hard now.  
  
But I have to see him again.  
  
Resolution firm, Yugi headed east, and then slowed down as an odd spectacle met his eyes.  
  
There was another Burger World in this section of Domino City, erected despite the unfortunate incident that had occurred in one of the franchise's first establishments. Yugi could still recall it in his mind; Anzu, working as a waitress despite school regulations, had been taken hostage by an escaped convict and held at gunpoint. Yami Yugi had saved her, of course, but Yugi had been unaware of the rescue at the time. Yami would reveal himself later, and ever since he had, Yugi's life had never been the same.  
  
It's not the same now, Yugi thought, as he walked closer to see what was going on.  
  
The Burger World was flooded with red and blue flashing lights, as police cars surrounded the entire building. Yellow police tape criss- crossed the parking lot, and a formidable crowd had gathered outside to watch.  
  
Yugi shuddered slightly as he neared the resturaunt. Something horrible had happened here, and the air was full of invisible dark spots.  
  
News reporters wandered in and out of the building, occasionally raising their cameras to seal the results of the event for the public eye to mull over during breakfast time. Police officers and other important looking people stalked over the tarmac, shooing away onlookers who got too close and muttering to eachother grimly in low, hushed voices.  
  
One police officer appeared to be consulting with a young woman who wouldn't stop crying. The woman was wearing a Burger World waitress outfit, the front of which was stained by her tears. Yugi got as close to the police barriers as he dared and peered over cautiously.  
  
"And how long were you in there for?" "A f-f-few d-days... I d- dunno... It was h-horrib-ble..." the waitress was sobbing. She couldn't stop shaking. Yugi feared for her.  
  
The police officer had her arm around the waitress' small shoulders, which were heaving up and down. "Can you describe exactly what happened?" she said soothingly. The waitress moaned and shook her head, violently. Then she looked up, for a fraction of a second, and her eyes opened.  
  
Yugi involuntarily stepped back. The woman had no soul.  
  
He couldn't ever know how he knew, but there was a vaccum- a complete absence that was just as effective as having something fill the space- that seemed horribly wrong in that blank, tearstained gaze.  
  
Yugi couldn't look away. He desperately wanted to; but his mind was locked in silent horror.  
  
The police officer gently took the waitress' bare hand, and in an instant the police officer was gone too; her soul dying from her eyes like the last of a burning ember.  
  
Yugi watched in abject shock and revulsion. The two empty shells remained, with one comforting the other who seemed bordering on the edge of hysteria, and then the police officer body led the waitress body away.  
  
Yugi wanted to be sick. Another police officer blocked his vision of the resturaunt with his midriff, and sternly told Yugi to get a move on. Without a hint of reluctance, Yugi tore his eyes away and made his way back through the crowd which had accumulated behind him.  
  
He stumbled into an alley and retched against a wall. The rough brick scraped his hands, and he sobbed. He didn't want it, whatever it was. He didn't want to find out what was going on. If it all came down on him, he wanted to push it away, to reject it, this horrible duty that fate was pressing on him.  
  
But he had no choice. He had no choice, if he wanted Yami back.  
  
Do I want Yami back?  
  
Yes. Yes, with all my heart, my soul and my mind, I want him back.  
  
I want him back...  
  
The longing forced bile into his throat, and he coughed, weakly. There it was. His decision laid out for him, in all its terrible monstrosity.  
  
Yami was out there... And if he was still there, he could be saved.  
  
Yugi set out once more, slower, but with a grimmer determination that further steeled his resolve. He had to find Yami... And when he did, perhaps they would all have a chance at redemption.  
  
Shadows tumbled in his wake as he headed northeast, regrouping behind him and becoming one once more. They trailed after him, marking his every move, like so many eyes in a blanket of darkness.  
  
He paid them no heed. 


	23. The Web of Souls

Chapter 23  
  
Miho Nozaka's mind is collapsing.  
  
She cannot feel it, but it is happening nonetheless. With every breath she takes, with every flutter of her eyelid, a bit of her soul drains away. Her eyes are dimming, filming over with the blankness of indifference. The virus is corroding her soul from the inside out.  
  
She sighs, contentedly, and sips her soup while watching TV. She supposes cream of tomato doesn't taste as bad as she had thought it would, but chicken noodle is still the best cure for illnesses. Or so her mother says.  
  
Her mother is suffering from the same disease. The soul one, not the fever.  
  
A police officer, escorting a young victim from the horrors of the Burger World resuraunt, is slowly dying. The victim, a waitress, is nearer to the point of death, as she sits in the warmth and comfort of the police car, chatting merrily to the officer about the tuition rates of Domino University. She is traumatized, and trying to forget through empty conversation. But she is too far gone to enjoy this banal cheeriness much longer.  
  
When the waitress goes home, she will throw herself into the arms of her boyfriend, sobbing hysterically. Her hand will be gripping his bare arms, as he is wearing a t-shirt to prove his toughness through the cold spell. And soon, he will be another soulless corpse to add to Domino City's growing collection.  
  
The police officer, on her way back to the station, will pay for her gas using change. The man at the counter will touch palms with her, and then she will be off, spreading death through the high-fives she is giving everyone back at the HQ. In turn, they too will continue this morbid chain reaction, and now every handshake, every bare-armed brush, every kiss is deadly. But, of course, nobody suspects a thing.  
  
Domino City is quickly becoming a web of interconnected souls, each flowing from their owners, as contact after contact plants these dark seeds into the victim's mind; sapping their life energy, draining them of the very essence which makes them human.  
  
And all these doomed souls; where do they go?  
  
They follow the shadows, of course.  
  
Right back to their source. 


	24. Aftermath Ghosts

Chapter 24  
  
Yami no Ni Koe, whose name no longer required the last three words, lay on his back in his Soul Room.  
  
The shadows, drifting idly across the ceiling like clouds, had stopped their thunderous clashing and had once more blended into a single, thick entity. The floor was as dry as a bone once more, the liquid mind flood having seeped through the crevices, permeating every crack of the room. The walls seemed to pulse with energy, bloated, swirling with mysterious forces.  
  
Yami coughed and propped himself up on his elbows. This was difficult, because something- or someone- was lying across his chest.  
  
He looked at it, blearily. He could see right through it, see the far wall through its transperant skin. It was himself.  
  
"Hahhh," panted the ghost. It didn't seem to weigh very much, and Yami felt little pressure from its body. Repulsed, he pushed at it. The shadow of himself began to support its own feeble weight. It looked at him with transperant eyes.  
  
"Who are you?" Yami asked it, and then he knew. "Yami?" he said, incredulously.  
  
He understood now. He, himself, was the combination of Yami and what had been Yami no Ni Koe. But now that they were mostly one and the same person, this ghostly being must be what was left. The Yami that had served Yugi Mutou... The Yami seeking his memories... The Yami, helpless and frightened, that had unleashed the darkness of his mind. Yami Yugi. This was what remained of him.  
  
The Yami Yugi ghost huddled before Yami/Yami no Ni Koe, looking drained and exhausted. Yami, by contrast, felt more alive and full of energy than he had ever remembered. And he realized, with blunt shock, that he no longer cared about his memories now that he had them. They were all the same, he saw that now. Darkness, bondage and slavery was all that it was. Part of him couldn't understand why he had been seeking these fragmented recollections in the first place; they brought nothing but pain.  
  
Yami Yugi's remains shifted closer to him, staring almost imploringly at his face. Yami scooted backwards, repulsed by this weakened figure, so devoid of energy. There was something in the ghost Yami's paled violet eyes, something haunted. "Memories..." it whispered, its thoughts barely stirring the dust on the floor. It reached towards Yami.  
  
Alarmed, Yami kicked out with a foot. The ghost, or whatever it was, gasped sharply and thinly, shrinking back and appearing to almost actually diminish in size. The outline of its wavering form flickered, slightly.  
  
Yami stared at it in disgust. Empty shell... Not worth his time...  
  
He stood up, relishing the sense of power his height gave him over the hunched and coughing thing lying on the floor. The pre-meld Yami looked up at him, with a frightened and hunted look in its eyes, which were about the only part of its face that seemed capable of showing any emotion. It shrank against the wall, peering at Yami, who, did, after all, contain some part of this creature within him. Most of it, in fact.  
  
"Not enough energy to assimilate all of you, am I correct?" Yami sneered at the remains of Yami Yugi's identity. He chuckled, ruefully. "That will soon be remedied. Very soon." He nudged the Yami-thing with a foot. "Get up."  
  
Yami/Yami no Ni Koe saw that the ghost was extremely weak. It stood, with a great deal of effort, and leaned against the wall, flickering and breathing in short little gasps; it seemed as though it were intagible enough to fall straight through the stones of Yami's Soul Room.  
  
Yami felt no sympathy; instead, irritation and derision coursed through his mind because he/they had not completely aligned his/their souls. This frail being, the leftover of their powerful soul fusion... It was barely worth absorbing. But it might have something of worth, containing some talent or emotion that Yami was missing. He decided to keep it until he could find enough energy to meld with it.  
  
Scowling and cajoling, Yami quickly ushered the Yami Yugi remains down the corridor. In its current state, the ghost was less than graceful; it was somewhat clumsy and stumbled often, in marked contrast to the new Yami's powerful, sweeping strides. As a result, Yami had to end up almost carrying the thing down the hall, as it clenched his shoulder for support with thin, spidery fingers. Yami shuddered. He couldn't wait to be rid of it.  
  
"Where should I put you..." Yami muttered to himself, rather than to the creature clinging to his arm. His eyes lit up, and he smiled, a familiar gesture. "I know the perfect place..."  
  
Practically dragging the ghost down the corridor, Yami stopped at a darkened hallway. He stared into it, scowling, recalling all the wasted years part of him had spent there. And it was all the essence of Yami Yugi's fault. But now they balanced eachother within the same personality- well, nearly. There was still a little bit of Yami Yugi to deal with.  
  
Angrily, Yami shoved Yami Yugi's identity towards the dark, gaping square at the other end of the chamber. Stumbling, the ghost stared into it with widened violet eyes, breathing as if each frail breath were its last. It was deeply frightened of the door.  
  
Yami smirked. "Don't you like it?" he said, wheedlingly, never taking his eyes off Yami Yugi's remains. "I had to spend a good part of my existance trapped behind that stone door. And it was all your fault." He reached out and forcefully pushed Yami Yugi in the back. Startled, the ghost sprawled onto the floor, its upper body halfway through the great maw of the opening. It reared back, but Yami had stepped up right behind it.  
  
"Do not even think of running," whispered Yami, menacingly. "I have served my time in the darkness." He was still smirking.  
  
"It is your turn, now."  
  
And he didn't even force it into the room beyond the Stone Door. He just stared, piercingly, until the shadow that was the remains of Yami Yugi's soul backed into the blackness and the silence, and crouched there, its outline scarcely visible in the dark. It peered out, mistily, like a whisp of cloud gradually melting away into the breeze.  
  
Yami walked up to the entrance and put a hand on something far above Yami Yugi's line of sight. "Don't worry," he said in a deceptively soothing voice, "there are things in that room to keep you company."  
  
Slowly, the great Stone Door began to close, at an unseen, unheard command from Yami. Yami smiled a small, triumphant grin as the shadows around Yami Yugi's ghost thickened and deepened, until they swallowed its pale face up in the darkness.  
  
The Door sealed itself with a collasal thud that reverbrated around the chamber. Yami stared at it with distaste, haunted by the grim memories, then turned and left the room.  
  
The plan was in effect. It had been in effect a while ago, but now was when things had finally started to speed up.  
  
Yami exhaled in satisfaction. All he would have to do now was sit back and let the shadows take their course. Let Yami Yugi's ghost rot in his Soul Room; he didn't need it. And it was too weak and vulnerable to do anything.  
  
Let it play by itself back there, he thought, turning his mind to more important matters.  
  
I have other games to win. 


	25. Role Reversal

Chapter 25  
  
Yami sat alone in the darkness, frightened beyond all belief.  
  
Frozen to the ground, on all fours like an animal caught in a searing blast of light- only here it wasn't light that was paralyzing, it was the dark- Yami shuttled backwards, trying to find a wall he could put his back up against.  
  
He barely existed. He barely had a soul. He had emotions, certainly; but they swirled around and around his head, without anything to ground themselves on. All he knew was fear. His eyes darted back and forth, but the shadows pressed against him and he could see nothing. He felt behind him. There was no wall.  
  
Whimpering, Yami curled into a fetal position and tried to get a bearing on his thoughts. That figure, stalking around outside the Door... Who was it? It looked like him... But there were huge gaps in his memory and his ability to think coherently, gaps that had once been filled. But that powerful presence who had flung him so uncaringly in here... What did he have to do with any of that?  
  
Nothing made any sense. His thoughts fluttered up and away from him, swooping, sneering. He tried to catch them, but they slipped from his grasp and laughed, smiling familiar smiles. His mind rang with the effort, and at the end the only thing he had managed to figure out was that he was scared and unable to do anything productive, which was more or less the same state he had been in before being thrown in here.  
  
Yami pressed the heels of his palms against his eyeballs and sobbed. Lightning flashed across his mind, momentarily, as he pressed harder and felt the dull pain behind his face. He relaxed the mental pressure, but kept his hands over his eyes.  
  
What seemed like hours later, Yami straightened up, slowly, and once more began to explore the invisible perimeters of his prison. He felt around himself in a circle, with tiny, tentative movements, but his fingertips encountered nothing but dust.  
  
He crawled forward, in minute increments. His questing revealed nothing, until...  
  
Yami's knee kocked up against a solid object, which began to roll away. Startled at first, Yami scuttled back a few paces, and then came to the conclusion that his curiosity was going to get the better of his cautiousness.  
  
Desperately, afraid that the object would simply roll off forever into the darkness and leave him with nothing but his own scattered thoughts, Yami suddenly sprang forward and flung an arm haphazardly in the direction that he had heard the sound. By pure luck, his arm brushed something round. He quickly reeled it in.  
  
He picked it up, its firm weight reassuring to his own transparant spirit. It was perfectly smooth, and was shaped like a ball, or a globe. He could not tell its colour, of course, and if there was anything written on it than he would be at a loss to say what.  
  
Feeling the sphere with his fingertips, Yami found that there was something scratched into its otherwise unbroken surface. He felt around the edges of the shape, tenderly, like a person reading Braille; he discovered nothing else about it other than that it seemed to evoke feelings in him that he had somehow forgotten, or had never felt before.  
  
He traced the outline of the shape, again and again; faintly, oh so slowly, like the cold fogging up a glass window, images and sensations melted into his mind's eye.  
  
Warmth.  
  
Light.  
  
And...  
  
Something else was there, haunting the edge of his vision; he couldn't make out what it was. A silhouette of something, or someone, teasingly flickering just at the border of coherency.  
  
The images lasted about the time it takes for a spark from a campfire to die out. It had been just a fading glance, a tantalizing glimpse into a world that was no longer his.  
  
Yami wished he had never found the globe. It had offered him nothing except a longing to get out of this place. The helplessness and the fear of this dark dungeon and his jailer rose up in his throat once more, and he held the sphere tightly in his hands. Then, on a sudden impulse of rage and frusturation, he raised his arms and brought the globe down hard on the stone floor.  
  
Predictably, it shattered.  
  
Pieces made skittering noises as they scuttled across the room. Yami heard them go to rest, and the dust settled and the silence returned.  
  
Shaking and drained, devoid of energy once more, Yami slumped into his now customary position of defeat. He suddenly wanted the sphere back in his hands, yet he was glad that the temptation to view it was gone.  
  
Nevertheless, he began to pick through the shards that lay scattered on the floor. Some were bigger than others; most of the biggest pieces lay together in a broken pile in front of him. His fingers moved through it, grasping some, gently nudging aside others. Sifting, discarding...  
  
After several hours, Yami finally found the shard he was looking for. With a small, tired breath of triumph, he held it in his fingers. The carving was intact on the part of its surface that was still smooth, and gently curved, like an eggshell; devoid of its power, its golden imagery and warmth and empty promises, but still a better companion than the room and its unexplored territory.  
  
Yami slipped the shard in a pocket; the gesture felt strangely familiar, and he was overcome by a sense of a time long buried in his mind. He was about to pursue the sensation further, but something interuppted him.  
  
Let's play a game...  
  
Yami heard the voice, but did not know whether it was from the future, the present or the ancient past, and he even wondered if it had been him who had just said it.  
  
A memory? A dream? His jailer? Words meant nothing to him, now; his was a world of reactions, senses and instinct, and these were not at their best in his current state. If something were to happen, he would have no defenses at all.  
  
As if to prove his helplessness, something moved. Quick and silent as a striking cobra, it wrapped itself, tendril-like, around Yami's ankle. He cried out in shock. It felt cold and rough, whatever it was, and the sensation of it coiling around his arms and legs sent him into a blind panic. Vulnerable as he was, weakened and helpless, he gave up the struggle almost as soon as he had started it. He lay there and trembled, shivering, as the shining ropes wound up his body. He was already exhausted from his brief moment of exertion.  
  
There were several loud snapping sounds; Yami's frail sensory system jerked. A cold, smooth object was encircling his wrists and ankles. And as the thing wrapping itself around him reached his neck, he realized that it was not a rope, but a chain.  
  
And the chain seemed alive, as it was now dragging him in one particular direction through the darkness. Yami gasped, the cold, mettalic scent of the mental links overwhelming his senses. They made a rasping noise as they slithered, softly, in the shadowed room.  
  
Yami felt himself being propped up against something solid. So there was a wall.  
  
The chains grew slack as they seemed to disappear into the stone, invisible in the darkness. They hoisted him up, roughly, and he felt his arms and legs being pulled outwards until he was spreadeagled across the gritty surface pressed against his back. The cuffs around his wrists and ankles, for cuffs were what they must have been, undulated and twisted, until half of their circular shackles were embedded firmly in the wall.  
  
Chained and bound, Yami hung there, barely supporting his own lightweight.  
  
He dropped his chin onto his chest. That dark, foreboding figure had probably done this to him... Keep him under lock and key until he could figure out something worse to do to him... Fear still ran through his mind and soul like ice water, but he didn't dare look up to face whatever lay beyond the veil that hung just before his eyes.  
  
So he rested. He had nothing else better to do... 


	26. Revenge in Progress

Chapter 26  
  
Yugi stood in the middle of the parking lot, unsure of his next move.  
  
He had been tracking Yami well enough; or so he thought, for all of a sudden his meager connection had been lost. He scanned for it, frantically, but to no avail. Whatever bond had existed between them was now gone, dissapated into the darkening air.  
  
He breathed hard and wiped his brow. His sweat was cold. Yami couldn't have just disappeared, could he? And Yugi should still have been able to sense him even if Yami were out of the city limits. So what other alternatives could there be...  
  
Yugi's spine stiffened. What if Yami were... What if he had been...  
  
But how can disembodied spirits die? Yugi wondered, fearfully, believing Yami to still be in the Puzzle. He wavered, indecisively. What should he do now? He could go home and try to think things over some more, by which time it might be too late to see Yami again. Or he could keep searching, in vain, looking for someone who probably didn't want him around any longer anyways. After all, Yami had left him...  
  
Why did he leave? Yugi's breath held up in his throat. That was it. That could be the excuse he would have for trying to find his former partner. It was plausible, and it would offer him some answers if he did manage to find Yami.  
  
Hope rekindling in his chest, Yugi was about to set off, when he remembered that he didn't know which direction to head. He opted to keep going northeast, and perhaps he would encounter someone who posessed or had seen the Puzzle.  
  
And so he struck out for the seedy northeastern district, ignoring the people passing him by, who were trudging their way to obvlivion with every step they took.  
  
Yugi's quarry was free of the Puzzle, but Yami had used it for his own purposes when he had been Yami no Ni Koe. It was through the Puzzle that he had aquired enough energy to mind meld with Yami Yugi, and the energy was still flowing.  
  
Through currents of darkness, hear my plead...  
  
In shadow and soul my commands you must heed...  
  
A rune recited when he was very young, he recalled. While other children may have been lulled into unconsciousness by softly whispered verses of stuffed animals and talking bells, Yami had sung himself to sleep on a chant to the darkness.  
  
He was so alone. And so tired.  
  
Yet he was powerful, and growing more so with every second that Domino City wasted away. And soon, he would have enough energy to finally be free of this world, and its constraints, its boundaries and prisoned souls. The mere thought of this elusive freedom almost took his breath away.  
  
And so his plan would work. The only thing to do now was to wait until the shadows restored his vitality, and then he would see to the wasted creature hanging limply in his former cell. Perhaps Yami would merely hunt through his mind in search of something worthy to absorb, and then discard the shell.  
  
But for now, his body was restless with so much activity taking place in his Soul Room and so little being expended on physical means, and thus Yami departed the ruined apartment houses.  
  
He didn't dare walk back into the heart of the city, because the authorities would no doubt find him a very suspicious character; and although he could easily assimilate their life energy, his Soul Room was already beginning to bulge slightly with the soul matter still seeping through the walls. The energizing process took time, and if it were to be rushed, something horrible would probably happen and his chance for freedom would forever be lost.  
  
Yami noticed, with satisfaction, that several of the people he passed on the sidewalks had already been drained of their souls. Part of them were probably coursing through his very bloodstreams; his little virus had done its job well.  
  
Poor Yami Yugi, Yami thought to himself with an inward leer. He had no idea of what had been going on.  
  
Now they were one, and Yami Yugi wouldn't be around to spoil his plans.  
  
Well, most of Yami Yugi.  
  
It was cold out, but Yami basked in a summer's warmth that only he could feel. Physical warmth was something he had felt traces of before, from previous hosts, but real warmth, spiritual warmth... This he had never experianced.  
  
He leaned casually against the wall of a tiny drugstore, watching the passerby, just another wierd teenager. Some met his eye as they walked past, and seemed to shudder, involuntarily, before moving on. Most ignored him.  
  
He felt empty and cold inside, these emotions edged with a cool triumph that flickered brighter everytime he caught the soulless eye of one of his victims. Come the evening, and most of the city would be his.  
  
But he wouldn't be happy, when his victory came. He felt too far gone, too jaded. The darkness had taken his soul many years ago, and when he came to retrieve it, he would no longer have the abilities to accept these emotions. He had been run through regret, disappointment, and lonliness, but never such things as extreme as hatred or depression, for these were human qualities that ran deeper than his tainted soul allowed.  
  
So he was already dead, killed by his own virus from the moment of his birth. Darkness had already taken him.  
  
But he could still get his revenge.  
  
And yet... Part of him, the part that had been Yami Yugi, had vested in his soul faint traces of other emotions that he had probably picked up from his hosts. The Yami ni Ni Koe part resisted these implanted memories, but the closer their souls had interwined, the more difficult it was proving to be. He had wiped out most of Yami Yugi's memories through the meld process, but he was sure that he could not have destroyed all of them...  
  
Well, that was unimportant now. Nothing was important, in fact. All obstacles had been removed and the shadows were already doing his bidding, coursing invisibly through the city like the Angel of Death had in an ancient story he had once picked up from somewhere. What had it been? The wrath of God, sapping the souls of all the firstborn in Egypt. Yami smiled. He couldn't remember where he had first heard of that tale, but it amused him so very very much.  
  
I am here for more than your firstborn... I will take them all...  
  
Give me your poor, your huddled masses.  
  
I'll suck them dry. 


	27. Encounters

Chapter 27  
  
Walking into a dismal area of the city's most poverished district, Yugi caught a trace of something. There. No. It was gone again. Whirling, he closed his eyes, concentrated, trying to feel for those dark streaks in the air where he knew must lead back to Yami. He inhaled, deeply, as if trying to breathe in the essence of Yami's soul, wherever it was.  
  
There was a rustling sound from his right. He turned. An old man wearing ragged clothes lay in an alcove and stared at him with beady eyes.  
  
Yugi shrank back, until he realized that he was, indeed, a living human, not a soulless zombie. He smiled, involuntarily. He didn't think this man had much chance of becoming infected by whatever it was that had suddenly started to pollute the atmosphere of Domino City. Nobody was about to just walk up and touch a filthy, potentially hostile hobo unless they had a good reason, and they never did. The destitute were something to ignore in person, and were to be given charity through indirect means. Yugi knew it was sad, but this time it would probably save a few lives.  
  
The man glared at him, stonily. Yugi, embarassed, quickly dug into his pockets and came up with the last of his allowance. He held it out, and the man took it. Yugi noticed, with satisfaction, that the man was wearing gloves. He wished he had brought a pair along.  
  
"Um... Sorry to bother you, but have you seen anyone with a sort of pyramid shaped thing hanging around their neck?" Yugi asked, on a sudden impulse. The man stuffed the wad of yen into a pocket concealed by his many folds of clothes, and roughly shook his head. Yugi's hopes dropped, but he smiled and politely thanked the man anyway. The man gave Yugi a two- fingered salute as he began walking away. Yugi waved, then turned and kept going.  
  
Sighing, he leaned against a building, trying to think. Yami... Yami... Where could he have gone...  
  
And all at once, his senses picked up on something. He straightened up, peering huntedly around. It was in the air. It was blowing in his face. It was...  
  
Yugi was confused. Two? Two streaks of darkness, running parallel, filtering in and out of eachother quicker than the eye could see. One dimmed, the other darkened. He looked around. Something was nearby.  
  
His mind locked on a direction, and he began to run it, afraid that his trail would suddenly disappear again. And then, just as he had thought it, something did disappear. One of the currents... faltered... dropped out of his mind... Yugi sped up. If he lost the other one, it might be his last chance...  
  
He was knocked back hard, and sprawled painfully on the concrete ground. The wind and all its flowing secrets knocked out of his lungs, Yugi held his chest and tried to choke down a breath of oxygen. He looked up, woozily.  
  
A woman was standing above him, apparently unfazed by the collision she had just been involved in. She had purple hair and a thick coat on, and Yugi thought he recognized her from somewhere. "Mrs. Nozaka??" he gasped, panting. She slowly looked down at him, smiling.  
  
She did not look well. There were dark semicircles under her eyes, and there was something crooked in the angle of her posture that did not seem to fit with her image of a successful business woman. But Yugi noticed neither of these things, too transfixed by the sight of her empty eyes was he.  
  
Yugi struggled up and back, trying to put as much distance between his bare skin and hers as possible. He panted, eyeing her warily. She stared at him. "Why, hello, Yugi. Aren't you one of Miho's classmates?" Mrs. Nozaka inquired, politely.  
  
No longer worried about politeness, Yugi shook his head, then wildly dove around the startled Mrs. Nozaka body and ran down the street. "Yugi!" he heard her calling. "Yugi?!"  
  
Not real... Not alive... Tears prickled his eyes. He was suddenly aware of the danger he was in. The entire city might be infected, and who knows what would happen next... He was trapped in a dying world, and he had to find the exit before it was too late.  
  
And somehow he knew that Yami would have the key.  
  
Following the trail again, and keeping an watchful look out for other blank stares, Yugi hurried up the street. He peered into the distance, and someone caught his eye.  
  
It was a boy, or a young man; Yugi couldn't tell from his vantage point. He was tall, all dressed in black, and strangely enough, he didn't seem to be aware of the chill blanketing the city, even though he was wearing a loose t-shirt which pulled against his slender arms in the flapping breeze. He was leaning casually up against a wall, arms folded across his chest. The expression on his face betrayed nothing.  
  
Yugi walked catiously up to him, prepared to make a break for it if the man turned out to have no soul. Yugi didn't want to have to face another lifeless corpse; each time he saw one, it got worse. And so he was relieved when he got close enough to come to the conclusion that the man hadn't fallen under Domino City's numbing spell, a relief that turned to ice in an instant when Yugi noticed the cut of the man's hair.  
  
What...  
  
Shadows funelled away from his mind, drawn to the figure all in black, who didn't seem to have noticed Yugi standing there. Black current... Black currant berries... Filtering inwards, flowing where necessary.  
  
Yugi's mind spun, admist the dancing shadows. He tried to think. The shadows kept getting in the way.  
  
Do you know where Yami is? he could ask the dark young man.  
  
The trail ends here.  
  
Yes, the man might reply, laughing.  
  
The eye of the storm.  
  
I'm looking for a Puzzle. Have you seen it?  
  
No.  
  
I don't know.  
  
I know you.  
  
The young man turned and looked at Yugi, through eyes that, while certainly alive, had been haunting Yugi's dreams for the eternity since his departure. He smiled, a sickeningly familiar smile.  
  
"Have you seen a Puzzle?" Yugi heard himself whisper, his question not strong enough to carry all the way to the figure before him. But the shadows seemed to pluck the words from the air, flowing them back to their source. Violet pupils narrowed in amusement.  
  
"No. But I know a young girl who has. Intimately."  
  
And at the expression on Yugi's face, Yami threw back his head and laughed, scattering particles of light into the oncoming dusk. 


	28. Losing the Last Light

Chapter 28  
  
"You got out," Yugi said slowly. He looked over Yami's body; Yami looked almost exactly as what Yugi might have if Yugi hadn't been born a hundred-pound weakling. Darker skin, colder eyes. Body more slender than Yugi's slight frame. Yami watched his face. Yugi was unable to say anything.  
  
Smirking at Yugi's speechlessness, Yami cocked his head slightly to one side and said, "So... How do you like..." He spread his slender arms out. "...the new me?" He smiled, not entirely reassuringly.  
  
Yugi opened his mouth, soundlessly. Nothing he could say at this point could express the utter bafflement and helplessness he was feeling in the dark face of this situation. Yami's smirk, while definitely familiar, had never been turned upon Yugi before. Yugi couldn't meet those sharp, cruel eyes.  
  
And had he ever pictured Yami as cruel? This person standing before him had an unidentifiable gleam in his eyes that Yugi couldn't place at first. Had it been there before? Had he noticed? His head spun.  
  
Yami seemed to sense Yugi's discomfort and folded his outstretched arms across his chest. He was almost two feet taller than Yugi was, and if Yugi had dared meet his eyes, he would have had to step back a bit and crane his neck upwards. "Well?" Yami snapped, impatiently, the cold welcoming draining rapidly from his smooth voice.  
  
"How did you do this?" Yugi whispered, still looking at the cracked and jagged sidewalk. "Why..."  
  
Yami's grin widened. "Oh, I can answer the latter sufficiently enough." Yugi wished that he hadn't asked the question. He stared at the ground, trembling, and silent. The dark figure in front of him made a careless gesture, and spoke. "It was simple, really. Yugi... You are familiar with the Shadow Games, am I correct? And of the role of the King of Games, the Watchman of the Dark?" Shadows tingled across Yugi's skin at Yami's voice.  
  
"Yes," Yugi whispered, still refusing to face the knowing, judging eyes.  
  
"Well, then you must know that I played the Shadow Games primarily for your protection. Is that also not correct?" Yami probed him, almost mockingly. Yugi pinched his arms through the material of his jacket. "...Yes..."  
  
"You would have that be my fate for as long as you needed. I am no slave. The final decision, when the opportunity came for me to make it, was obvious."  
  
Yami put one hand in his pocket, and with the other, reached out and lifted Yugi's chin so that the two were looking at eachother face to face. "...How could someone like me live forever serving the wills of others?" he asked, softly.  
  
Yugi stared at Yami, with widened eyes. Yami only went on. "So when the chance for freedom was given to me, I only had to think of one reason why I should leave you; I had to, being partners for so long..."  
  
Yami's head was lowered; a thin strand of gold hair brushed against Yugi's cheek in the dead wind. "...and I thought of one."  
  
Yami's breath, so alive within the decayed atmosphere of the city, contained dark currents.  
  
"I did not need you any longer."  
  
A silent sob, barely detectable, beat once through Yugi's leadened heart. Other than that one, final death of hope, Yugi was completely still and silent.  
  
Yami gently let go of Yugi, and, without so much as a parting word or a last contemptuous backwards glance, strode away.  
  
Yugi stood on the sidewalk of the dying city, and felt as if his own soul were joining the grey metropolis in its slow descent to darkness, as he watched the person he cared about most walk unconcernedly out of his life.  
  
"You can't!!" he screamed, suddenly. "I still need you!!""  
  
But not even the shadows were around to answer. 


	29. Death Outspoken

Chapter 29  
  
Yami Yugi's ghost, hanging in the darkness, looked up.  
  
The other him was talking to someone...  
  
The voices were faint, and he could barely make out what they were saying through the thick stone walls of his prison. But no soul is ever completely impenetrable, and Yami caught enough traces of the encounter outside to get an idea of the situation within his shattered mind.  
  
But the second voice was what made him lift his head in blurred recognition.  
  
He recognized it from somewhere. That soul, outside... He knew it. Or had known it.  
  
"....Yu...." The name was on the tip of his tongue. But what was it? It had been a short name, very short. And yet Yami's tampered memory banks would not allow him the other half of the name, thus making the harmless length of it all the more frusturating. Yami closed his eyes tight, and tried to concentrate- Yu... Yooo... The flit of a passing breath of something destroyed what little hold he had gotten on the task of remembering the remaining syllables. Yu. Yoo- flit. -ooo- flit. Flit. Swish...  
  
With the last flutter of the darkness went the part of the name that he had already. He had lost all of it. The shadows had stolen it. He couldn't remember a single solitary letter, and even the memory of the familiarity of the soul outside was fading away.  
  
Yami sobbed, and clenched his fists, the stone scraping against his back and the shackles cutting into his wasted wrists. He pulled anyways, which only made it worse, and a thin trickle of blood ran down his forearm.  
  
He watched its scarlet path across his pale skin, having to crane his neck painfully in order to do so. It calmed him. The way the liquid traced a slight, slender line, gently winding down his arm, was soothing.  
  
As the hours till dawn passed slowly and dead in the stone prison, Yami forgot about the reason for his anger. Given enough time there, and he wouldn't have even cared. The shadows were beginning to affect him, quicker than before, and his will to keep on fighting was dimming. In his soul rested the very last traces of Yami Yugi and his memories of past lives, and if the stone prison won, then Yami Yugi would cease to exist.  
  
And this gradual descent into complete mind-numbing slumber would have eventually ocurred, if Yami's last spark of life hadn't somehow activated the shard still nestled in his pocket.  
  
The reaction was nothing outwardly signifigant; the shard, responding to Yami's edged and dying memories, reflected the last remaining glow of Yami's one last attempt at recall. Yami didn't notice. The barely detectable light died, after a split second, and the room was completely dark once more.  
  
But unknown to him, the other, darker Yami, or his former partner, the gleam of light held out longer than was visible to him. Like a faint signal of identity, a traceable streak of light, the blip of Yami's ghost's memories was caught in a dark current, and was propelled through a vastness that was not quite part of the phyiscal world. Where was it now?  
  
Only one person would notice it.  
  
"Where were you yesterday?" Sugoroku asked his grandson, the next morning.  
  
Yugi stared at the table.  
  
Sugoroku sighed, and leaned back heavily in his chair to grab the unread newspaper lying on the table. "Yugi... I know there's something wrong," he said gravely, opening the day's events. He read the headlines in silence, then tapped the paper, making a faint rustling sound. Yugi raised his head slightly. "And this news confirms my statement!" his grandfather added, with cocked eyebrows.  
  
He flipped the paper around and offered it to Yugi, who, moving extremely slowly as if he had forgotten how to lift his arm, took it.  
  
The cover headline blared black-on-grey: "TWENTY-THREE FOUND DEAD IN LOCAL BURGER WORLD: ONE SURVIVOR OF MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY". And, on the second page, "MORE FOUND DEAD AT HOME/AT WORK, CAUSE OF DEATH UNKNOWN".... And then a list of the victims. Unwillingly searching, one name caught Yugi's eye.  
  
Noxaka, Miho- Found Sept. 19, 2003  
  
And right below that, another name, one that held all the pain and devastation of the last few days:  
  
Mazaki, Anzu- Found Sept. 20, 2003  
  
Yugi did not care to check the list for other painfully familiar victims. He wanted to cry, or be sick, or to lie down in his bedroom and never come out. Before the concerned, kind face of his grandfather, the latter was the easiest choice. So he lowered the newspaper without a glance at the story below the picture, which was a greyscale photo of the Burger World swarmed with police officers and ambulances, and crept upstairs to the attic.  
  
Anzu was gone. How many of his friends had gone with her, consoling Miho, grasping her bare hands, wishing her well? And she had unknowingly taken their lives. Yet, had it been the name itself that had triggered this sense of loss? Or was it merely a reminder that the world he knew was collapsing into that dark void into which Yami had vowed he would never come out of? Never come back again?  
  
Beyond despair, even beyond numb horror, Yugi stood in the middle of his cold floor and stared blankly out the window.  
  
He wanted to stand there forever... Not moving, not thinking, not feeling. There was nothing else in life to live for; losing Yami had left him out in the cold. What else was there to do? He had loved Yami, and even friends could be replaced... Perhaps not easily, but ancient spirits don't come along twice in a lifetime.  
  
But the most awful thing about the whole terrible situation was that Yami didn't even seem to care.  
  
Yugi's hands trembled as he threw back his head and let the monotone, stained ceiling whirl dizzyingly around his head. Guilt and misery were mixed up somewhere in there, but everything was such a mess now he could barely think coherently. Did he miss Anzu? Did he miss Yami more?  
  
I should just give up.  
  
I hate this city.  
  
The city; an old, rotting pile of buildings. The people; dead in the eyes and still walking around like nobody's business. His friends were nowhere that he cared to be; and he likewise where they'd probably never bother looking for him.  
  
His entire life had disappeared with Yami, into some dark recess of Domino. And he couldn't go back; Yami didn't want to see him, and what made it worse was the fact that Yami was still out there in the city, walking among the lifeless souls of its occupants. This meant that the temptation, the urge to find him, would consume Yugi's mind.  
  
Deeply wanting to respect Yami's wishes, Yugi knew he would never try to seek out that lithe figure again. But without him, Yugi would never feel the same happiness he had in Yami's company.  
  
Torn between impulses, desires and emotions, Yugi knew that his life was over.  
  
Not literally, of course... But without Yami, there would always be that vaccum in his soul, consuming energy and spirit. Nothing was left. Yugi had been so utterly connected to Yami, been so much a part of him that, when the link was finally broken, his own soul seemed to have dropped out along with Yami's absence. Identity was no longer his.  
  
Distraught and hanging in an unstable balance, Yugi almost didn't catch the faint snapping of a connection clicking into place between two minds. But he knew the sensation well.  
  
A tiny pinprick of someone's recollections of a past long forgotten flared, for one second, in his mind; resonating with the source, it died abruptly. But Yugi had recognized the signal just in time.  
  
"Yami?" 


	30. Solitary Dueling

Chapter 30  
  
Yami whirled, mentally, defenses up.  
  
The name still sounded in his ears. "Yugi..." Who had said it? How did they know?  
  
Yami Yugi's prison almost seem to blanch as the Stone Door was flung upwards; the level of darkness in the room did not decrease, but seemed to darken in volume with Yami's rage.  
  
"What did you say?!!" he shouted at the waste chained to the wall. He stepped forward, violet eyes crackling with anger. "How can you still remember that name..."  
  
Yami Yugi looked at him with deadened eyes. Blood was trickling down his arm. "I do not... know..." he whispered, speaking the truth. Yugi... How familiar the name sounded! And how familiar that echo of light! But who was it? Whose name had he breathed into the darkness, incurring such wrath from his twin persecutor? "I-"  
  
Yami jabbed a slender finger into Yami Yugi's thin chest, leaning in closer. "You still resound with his soul," he accused the ghost, pressing its back into the wall. Practically insubstantial, Yami Yugi wavered fearfully. "But... I do not-" "How can you still have a connection with him?! That is unacceptable! You broke all ties with him! The shadows cannot permit such an obvious breach of conduct!"  
  
Yami spun away, glowering. The ghost trembled in his presence; dark, terrifying and supremely at odds with whatever was left in Yami Yugi's mind about what was right and sane. What was to be done? Yami Yugi barely knew which way was up anymore.  
  
"You have something of his," Yami said suddenly. "Something... A fragment of the life you once shared with him." Yami turned and imposed his gaze on Yami Yugi with such force that the ghost seemed even paler in comparison. The darker figure held out his hand, fingers outstretched. Yami Yugi stared at Yami without knowing what it was that he was expected to do.  
  
"Give it to me," Yami demanded, in a flat voice. There was a rustle, and the chains binding the prisoner slipped themselves off his ankles and wrists, sliding back into the wall until it looked as if they had never been there. Only one remained; the metal cylinder around Yami Yugi's neck still connected him to the stone by a few meters of chain.  
  
The ghost rubbed his forearm, fretfully. It could barely support itself against the wall. "Give you what?" it said in a low whisper, using as little breath as possible with which to speak its words.  
  
"The memory shard. Whatever links you still. Yugi Mutou-" Yami spat the name, hating and fearing it, "is still able to contact you through it. I must eliminate that possibility for you, as you barely have enough control over your mind to speak coherently." Yami's smirk played over his lips. His hand was still out. "Give it to me."  
  
Yami Yugi raised his head with a sudden defiance. "No." Yami's eyes flashed, horribly. "What?" "I cannot give it to you," Yami Yugi said, almost pleadingly. "I cannot say why, exactly, but you must understand- ah!"  
  
Yami had slapped him, open-handed, and extremely hard.  
  
The ghost slid to the cold floor, clutching at his cheek; which, instead of burning with pain, seemed almost to numb and lose feeling. Yami towered over him, trembling.  
  
"You do not understand!" he shouted. "It is you who does not understand! I severed contact with Yugi Mutou for a reason. He is poison to me, now." Yami swept a dark arm out to the side, and his voice lowered by a degree. "If he tries to find you, I will kill him."  
  
Yami's breathing was erratic, and his normally fuid movements were tainted by the intensity of his emotions. Yami Yugi, with nowhere to run, stared up at him in shock.  
  
Yami seemed not to notice him. "I cannot stay here without destroying the link," he said, softly. He stood for a moment, appearing unaware of his surroundings. Then, to Yami Yugi's confusion and amazament, Yami knelt down in front of him and stared into his face.  
  
"I need the shard. Give it to me," Yami breathed into Yami Yugi's ear, closing his eyes. Hauntingly beautiful. "This is not merely a game in itself. You do not understand the importance of my request. So I am telling you now, for the final time." Yami opened his eyes, fractionally, a slit of dark violet. "Give the shard to me."  
  
Yami Yugi didn't know why, but something in him was deeply opposed to Yami's command. He knew Yami must be talking about the black shard in his pocket; he didn't have a clue what it was, yet he had to protect it. Somehow, it was the bridge spanning the distance between him and that other voice whom he had overheard Yami talking to. And that, in turn, must have been connected in some way to the name he had spoken, involuntarily. He had to find the owner of the voice and the name, and then...  
  
Then what?  
  
Was it worth getting hurt, even killed, to protect the tiny piece of black marble in his posession? He didn't even know exactly who Yugi Mutou was, or even why he seemed so important to him.  
  
Yami Yugi drew himself closer, defensively. "I cannot." He braced himself. "I... cannot."  
  
But Yami, instead of striking him, merely regarded his prisoner with a not entirely unkind gaze. "You would have me kill him then?" he asked, softly. "If I do not destroy that which binds you and him together, he will seek you out. If this ever happens, I will be forced to kill him."  
  
"Why?" Yami Yugi said in a strained voice. Yami wasn't acting at all like Yami Yugi had expected he would, and it was unnerving.  
  
Yami's eyes hardened, but despite this, he seemed despairing. "I cannot tell you that."  
  
"It is your decision to give me the shard or not," he added, turning away.  
  
Yami Yugi wearily shook his head. He was weak now, and wanted to rest, to put all the questions and problems of the day behind for one blissful minute. He sat with his back against the wall and sank his head into his ams, shoulders lowered. He didn't notice Yami leaving; the return of lonely darkness was the same. 


	31. The Bridging of Voids

Chapter 31  
  
Yugi curled up in the chair before his desk, staring into nothing, listening to the voices in his mind; talking, arguing, contradicting eachother.  
  
He never called you. He said he wouldn't.  
  
But that signal, that connection... It was his!  
  
For you?  
  
Maybe not. And yet that wasn't the Yami I talked to on the street.  
  
You said it was Yami; you said it yourself. If not he who abandoned you, who else?  
  
I... don't know.  
  
Yugi sighed, deeply, his chin resting on his chest. Yami was the one thing occupying his thoughts tonight, and the mind link he had caught a few hours ago. It was as the voices had procclaimed; the signal had been unmistakably Yami's, although weaker than Yugi had remembered it to be. And yet, at the same time, it was a different quality of the darker presence he had felt when tracking the shadows; different than the Yami who had left him on the sidewalk. How could they be two different souls, and still be Yami? It wasn't logical.  
  
And then Yugi realized something. The lifeless citizens of Domino... Where had their souls gone? Surely there was a reason that they had left their owners, or a place for them to disappear. So where...  
  
And, just like that, two links snapping into place as easily as Yami's signal had into Yugi's mind, Yugi knew where these lost souls had drifted.  
  
It was obvious, now that he thought about it. All the dark currents he had traced while looking for Yami led back to the same source: Yami. Later, he had sensed two dark currents, each within the other, one of them attracting those blemishes in the air. And the atmosphere at the horrific scene at the Burger World had been full of them, all streaking over the town, leading the dismebodied spirits towards...  
  
Yugi stiffened. A heartbeat that wasn't his echoed in his mind, and melted away. He sat up straighter, striving to find that connection again, searching for it in the cracks between shadows. "Yami?" he called out, softly, hoping.  
  
There was no answer. The link had faded away once more.  
  
Unnerved and helpless, Yugi tried to concentrate on what was now being revealed to him. Yami was somehow involved in the plague that had overidden his city's streets. And to complicate matters further, there were two of Yami. Or, rather, two types of...  
  
Burying his head in his hands, Yugi swayed between the balance of fear and confusion. What should he do? What was there to be done?  
  
He remembered the insignifigantly small, black print in the newspaper, the name that the letters represented no more to the public than another statistic: Mazaki, Anzu. Found on the 20th of September. Cause of death, unknown.  
  
Yugi thought he knew the cause, and the terrible conclusion he would have to face slowly pushed him towards his bedroom door. No matter the cost, he had to find out for sure; and if what he was doing now wasn't for Anzu, then let it be for the Yami he had once known. 


	32. The First Step

Chapter 32  
  
Yami Yugi held his forearm where Yami had kicked him. "I thought we- I- had a choice," he gasped thinly, tears sliding down his pale ghost's face.  
  
Yami snorted derisively. "That was before you kept alerting him to your presence!" he snarled, eyes flashing in the darkness. "I warned you of this. I can sense him now; he is going to attempt to find you." He waved his hand, dismissively. "It is not of great consequence if he meets me face to face. I can easily deny your existance." Yami glared ferociously, then stepped closer to Yami Yugi, who shrank back. "But this makes my task of escaping all the more difficult!" He twisted strong fingers into Yami Yugi's hair and dragged him closer to the wall; Yami Yugi breathed unevenly with barely restrained sobs.  
  
"You do not need to do this!!" Yami Yugi cried, knowing what Yami would do if Yugi showed up. "What do you fear in him? I do not even know who he is-" "Silence!" snapped Yami abruptly. "I've had enough of these delays. The process is nearly complete; there is almost enough energy contained within these walls to allow me my freedom." He clenched his fist, and stared off into the distance. "Yugi Mutou is but another obstacle."  
  
"But why?!" Yami Yugi asked, tortured by the name. "Who is he? How is it that I know of him?"  
  
Yami looked down at the ghost cowering at his feet. "You were once partners... But I changed all that," he said, absently. "What?" Yami Yugi asked, but Yami wasn't listening. He was thinking of something of greater importance. Yami Yugi could see his dark half's thoughts; he struggled to his feet, moving with the frantic impulse that Yugi needed to be kept unharmed. "You canno-"  
  
Turning on his heel, Yami struck Yami Yugi full in the face. It was a smooth, fluid motion, complete and devastating. Yami Yugi sprawled on the floor, his slide interuppted by the chain binding his neck to the wall. He gagged, convulsively, and coughed red onto the dark stone. Yami watched him with little expression.  
  
"Do not talk about things that you do not understand," Yami warned. "I will be back once more to take the shard, and if you do not give it to me willingly, I shall force it from your grasp." With that, he left the room.  
  
Yami Yugi's pain was felt by another; just once, and briefly. But it was enough to push Yugi to make his final decision; he would find Yami, whoever he was now, and help him. Yugi been standing on the street in front of the Game Corner when the slight sensation of weariness and hurt entered his head, and he was sure now that Yami was in trouble.  
  
Yami didn't want him around any longer; he had made that clear to Yugi before. But the signal said something else. It was a plea, a call for help, almost.  
  
The questions of identity were these: Which Yami had abandoned Yugi, which one had sent the signal, which was responsible for Domino City's slow demise, and were they all the same person or not?  
  
And how could Yugi ever hope to find out?  
  
He could trace the currents again, but that would take time, which neither he nor Domino had much of. And besides, the part of Yami (or Yami himself; whichever) that wanted Yugi gone might be displeased, and then Yugi would have lost the only chance he would get at helping Yami and figuring out who was behind all this.  
  
Then there was the problem of the signal. If it had been sent unconsciously, Yugi would have no way of telling which part of Yami he had momentarily linked with. To identify the sender, Yugi needed to infilterate Yami's soul and find the source, and there was no way Yami was going to allow him to do that. The contract between them had been broken.  
  
Unless- and here was an idea that was so frightening and appealing in its structure that Yugi shivered- he followed the shadows form the inside.  
  
This haphazard method would only work, Yugi knew, if the currents actually did lead back to Yami's soul. If so, than why they did was an answer too terrible and mysterious to think about at this point; Yugi put it out of his head. As for getting into the dark currents themselves, there was only one way Yugi could think of, and the prospect terrified him.  
  
He began walking, once more, towards the core of the city. There would be a greater concentration of people there.  
  
Once again on the dry and withered streets of Domino, but with an entirely different purpose, Yugi waited for passerby. A woman was coming towards him, and he ran up, staring into her eyes as he did so.  
  
Luck! She was dead. Glancing at him curiously, but dead nonetheless. Yugi reached out towards her exposed wrist, until a piercing thought made him recoil. The woman brushed past him harmlessly, peeking at him over her shoulder, unsettled.  
  
What if his plan didn't work? What kind of way was this to enter Yami's soul?  
  
It was probably the worst alternative he could think of, but it was also the only option available to him now. Steeling himself, trembling, Yugi turned around and once again stepped nearer to the woman. She heard his footsteps and looked at him, a little annoyed now. "Young man, do you need anythin-" Her voice was cut off from Yugi's ears as, with a final burst of confidence, he leaned forward and grasped her wrist tightly in one hand.  
  
As their skin made contact with eachother, more questions entered Yugi's mind, and they were all of a vaguely disturbing nature: What if it doesn't work? How will you get back to your body? Are you sure this will take you to Yami's soul?  
  
Will it kill you?  
  
Will it hurt?  
  
Yugi closed his eyes as the sky seemed to tear asunder; screaming, shrill and high, filled his ears. There was a ripping sound, like that of two mile-long pieces of Velcro being pulled off eachother, only a thousand times louder. Yugi's soul was seperated-wrenched- from his physical body, being touched by a million fingers of shadow, probing, feeling, grasping. Yugi's mind rang soundlessly as he seemed to be divided, spliced and halved down the middle; the pain peaked, rose, crested, until there was a sudden drop into nothingness; his soul fluttered in limitless terror, and was then was flung headlong into the silent darkness... 


	33. The Wall

Chapter 33  
  
Yugi drifted through a vast expanse of darkness, intangible and insubstantial.  
  
Through the black mists, he could catch glimpses of other wayward souls; pale, moaning faces, desperately lashing out with painfully slow movements, twisting, grasping nothing. Yugi merely let himself float in the nothingness; he was not moving on a physical plane, nor was he actually moving at all. He couldn't describe the sensation. The shadows glided, but he did not. They slid above and below him, to his right and left, through him.  
  
What was he now?  
  
A ghost? A spirit? As a soul in its purest form, Yugi felt exposed, naked. All his innermost feelings and emotions, the most complicated aspects of his nature, seemed bared for all the world to see. The other souls didn't notice him, however, and carried on trying to escape the motionless and silent tunnel that they had been swept into.  
  
Time did not exist here, and after a complete nothingth of a second, Yugi felt the shadows slowing around him. To his surprise, he found himself standing on a flat, seemingly solid surface. Able to move once more, he bent down; his fingers had barely brushed the stone when he found himself being propelled forward, as if pushed by some unseen force.  
  
Horrified, Yugi tried to resist, but there was nothing to get a hold of here. Where were the walls? A foothold! The stone was smooth, and Yugi was sliding inexorably forward.  
  
Frantic, he looked around. The other souls were also being pulled in, screaming and crying; it was as if gravity had turned itself onto a wall further down the corridor. And, to Yugi's shock, that was exactly what it appeared to have done.  
  
Far, far away was an immense stone wall. Dead ahead, it seemed to be pulling all the spirits towards a large black hole in the otherwise unbroken vastness of its surface. Upon seeing that terrible void, the efforts of the people's souls to get away increased; it made little difference.  
  
After a short period of resistance, the first ghost finally hit the wall; a middle aged man, he shouted and tore at the floor in a futile attempt to escape. But to no avail. Before Yugi's eyes, the man's soul seemed to twist- deform- until it had been completely sucked into the hole.  
  
Yugi yelled and scarmbled backwards, but he could not resist the powerful pull of the adjacent wall. He could hear the cries of the others as they too were absorbed into the darkness. Tears collected in his eyes, but were drawn away towards the hole in a stream of glittering crystal. He dug his feet into the frictionless rock and concentrated.  
  
There was no way he would allow himself to be assimilated into the giant wall. He was aware of his predicament; the others were not. He knew where he was; Yami's soul had had a great many places which neither Yugi nor Yami had ever been permitted to see. But he had no idea that there would be this terrible vaccum, so devoid of light, hidden in one of those chambers...  
  
Straining, Yugi sought for the place in his head where the connections with Yami had taken place. There was no point of perspective in that narrow corridor with which to measure his distance from the hole, but it would not be long yet. His hair whipping before his face, Yugi sent out one last panicked signal of his own; and, by chance or some miracle, the link formed once again in his mind.  
  
Here, in a Soul Room, the link solidified and was made real. Yugi put out a hand and grabbed it, the void tearing at him now, trying to rip him from his hold on the chain. Yugi tightened his grip, gasping, now knowing how much longer he could hold out...  
  
And then, with a final wrenching tug, the hole closed itself, having digested the last of the hapless souls save one. The wall was whole once more.  
  
Yugi slumped to the floor, breaking the connection. He panted, drawing in deep breaths, trying to forget the scene he had just been forced to endure. So many of them... He didn't think there'd be more than a few a day, but at this rate, Domino would be sucked dry by tomorrow...  
  
Shaking his head, Yugi took in his surroundings.  
  
He was situated a few feet from the massive wall, which loomed over him, vengeful and waiting for the chance to strike again. Yugi decided to move out of the way of its gravitational path, and looked around. The wall to his left- there were walls, he could see that now- opened into a labrynthine weave of corridors. Yugi inhaled sharply. Yami's Soul Room lay beyond this chamber.  
  
No sooner had he walked out of the exit when the hole activated itself once more. Yugi watched as three or four more souls were sucked into the void, calling out helplessly. The wall sealed itself behind their departure.  
  
Shuddering with horror, Yugi started down the first hall. He felt uncomfortable and frightened beyond belief. Something was pulsing within the stones of Yami's Soul Room; something that had not been there before. Something ominous and very much alive.  
  
Yugi did not want to find out; yet, Yami needed him. Somehow.  
  
"He is seeking you," Yami informed his prisoner, with barely repressed rage.  
  
Yami Yugi coughed, painfully; blood trickled down his chin. "It is through no fault of mine," he whispered, and even as he said it, he knew it to be false. Yami did, too. "You know perfectly well that it is your fault he has come here!!" he shouted, eyes snapping violet fire. He lashed out swiftly, grabbing Yami Yugi's wasted wrist in an iron grip. "It is through your disobediance that he was not eliminated and absorbed. It is your fault only!" He twisted, and Yami Yugi cried out with the sudden, sharp pain that flashed through his wrist. Yami didn't relinquish his hold, but merely strengthened it, until Yami Yugi's shoulders were hunched and shaking and his voice barely audible through the mists of pain. "I- I- cannot give it to you!" he cried, sobbing uncontrollably; he was unaware that Yami had suddenly let go of his wrist.  
  
"Why do you resist me? I could kill you and destroy the shard easily. Why do you continue to ignore my request?" Yami asked Yami Yugi's ghost, almost sadly, it seemed. Yami Yugi cradled his broken wrist, and stared at Yami through his tears. "What?"  
  
Yami looked past Yami Yugi, into the shadowed middle distance. "I could kill you now and take the shard. Yet I will not." He bowed his dark head. Yami Yugi was astonished. "Compassion is available to you for a short time, here. Did you not believe I was capable of practicing it? I need the shard to secure my means of escape, but killing you is beyond the limit of how far I intend to go."  
  
"But you would hurt me," Yami Yugi said, his voice shaking. "And you would kill the one person I... the one person...." Yami Yugi's strength gave out, and he lapsed into a silence concentrated on staying conscious. He met Yami's eyes, and was shocked by the sorrow he saw there.  
  
Yami stared at him; the only sound in the room was that of Yami Yugi's haggard breathing, punctuated by an occasional withered cough. Yami's shoulders seemed to slump, slightly. "...I am sorry," he said softly, and reached out towards Yami Yugi's pocket, which held the shard. 


	34. Second Encounters

Chapter 34  
  
Yugi, travelling down a corridor that seemed perfectly identical to the one he had just left, felt a piercing flash of pain shoot through his wrist. He flinched, and stared at his arm in shock.  
  
So close to the core of the shadow activity, the link was taking a more active effect. Something was happening to Yami, and Yugi's pace quickened as he knew it probably wasn't good.  
  
Feeling the connection in his mind, reaching for it, seeking, Yugi pinpointed the source. It was easier than he'd thought it was; but there was something strange going on in this Soul Room.  
  
There was a fracture.  
  
He could feel it in the distance; a slight dislocation, something out of place. And there was another thing.  
  
There were two of them.  
  
Dual entities, joined, and yet not. Both were centered somewhere to his right; Yugi had to find the quickest route towards that area, or all would be lost. He set off with his heart pounding, the walls seeming to throb with his pulse; he barely felt the floor beneath his feet, gritty with sand and time.  
  
His footsteps were heard by others.  
  
As Yugi pelted down the seemingly endless labryinth, he felt a shift in a different part of the Soul Room. He stopped, wary. These once familiar corridors now held unknown dangers, and this could be another of them. The fear in his chest rose, surged, and washed over his mind with icy fingers; his head spun, uncontrollably. The world had become unstable in the space of a moment.  
  
Swimming through his sudden confusion, Yugi felt as if reality were twisting itself around his eyes, bending and melting in and out of his vision. Far, far away, a meter or a mile, something was moving. And as Yugi desperately fought off the waves of distortion battering towards him, he saw, for a mind-shattering second, what it was.  
  
Yami, for that's who it was, glided towards him; helpless in his current state, Yugi's eyes only widened in astonishment.  
  
Shadows billowing in his wake, Yami stopped before the intruder; his eyes smiled, rich and darkly. The violet of his hair was nearly blotted out by the darkness of the room, but his eyes still gleamed with something that was not quite light.  
  
"So, Yugi Mutou," he whispered, "we meet again."  
  
In the Stone Door chamber, Yami Yugi half lay in the dark, fearfully awaiting his doppleganger's return.  
  
Yami Yugi could not believe that all the malice and hatred in Yami's voice could be gone so quickly, and had jerked back with the last of his remaining strength when Yami had reached for the shard. Anticipating punishment for his resistance, Yami Yugi had not expected the events to follow as they had- Yami had suddenly become distracted, cocking his head to one side, whispering, "He is here..." and then, with a rustle, had gone from the room.  
  
Relieved, yet shaking with the close proximity of the danger to the shard, Yami Yugi was now left to himself once more.  
  
Disconnected thoughts trailed aimlessly after other disjointed memories. Yami Yugi could sense nothing through the thick walls of his prison; flashes of coherent imagery seared through his mind, every so often. Through these visions he could catch glimpses of another world; intricate grey structures, bursting against the sky... Strangers, pale and deformed, walking down walless pathways.  
  
And sometimes emotions flooded his mind's eye, darkly ebbing at his soul, painfully familiar and infinitely elusive. They belonged to that one person whom Yami Yugi longed to seek out, the stranger whose face he could never quite reach, the owner of the name that had been uttered with such loathing by Yami. Why?  
  
No time dared leak into the chamber where the ghost lay in perfect silence, and so he was forced to wait in suspended solitude; each minute an hour, each hour a year and every unmoving second a millenium. His only companions being the firey pain in his wrist, his shattered thoughts and the never-ending task of seeking that faceless entity, Yami Yugi lay in an indeterminate state; waiting, and waiting, for someone in his mind whose memory was nothing but the sheerest glow of light on a darkened surface... 


	35. Twin Mirrors

Chapter 34  
  
"I do not know why you appear so shocked. You are, after all, in my Soul," Yami said, eyes tilted in a dark parody of a friendly smile. He sighed, and gave a slight shake of his head, causing the air around the two to ripple with unseen forces. "And I thought you, of all people, would remember what happens to those who 'trespass in my soul'."  
  
Yugi tried to move, but the shadows pressed into him, opressively. He let himself go limp and looked up at his former partner. "I don't believe you could hurt me," he said quietly, trembling. "We were once allies. Friends, even! How could you do this to me?" His voice rose. "What did you do to yourself?!"  
  
"Do not patronize me, Yugi," said Yami, scornfully. "I recall nothing of a friendship."  
  
The air shimmered with the chill of Yami's words. Yugi remembered their last encounter, and realized that this was merely an echo of that last day of meager warmth. He looked down, voice rapidly draining of hope as he softly replied, "Then what do you remember?" Dreading the answer.  
  
Yami's eyes darkened further. "What do I remember?" he snarled. "You, using me. I, serving you. I, Dueling endlessly for you. I, submitting to your light." Yami tossed his head, angrily. "Do not tell me you cannot remember," he spat, leaning forward. "You could push me out into the open whenever you saw fit, sometimes knowing full well that it was against my will. Is that not true?"  
  
"It is NOT!!" Yugi could keep quiet no longer. Yami's expression rested between satisfaction and rage. "Is it not?" he asked softly, knowingly. "Did you not force me to speak to the girl Anzu, in the guise that she might aid me find my memories? It was uncalled for." "Yes, but that was only once, and I was only trying to-" "And did you not continually request my assistance in your Duels?" Yami pressed. Yugi stopped, shocked. "But- I thought that you liked Dueling!" he said, lamely. His heart sank as he saw Yami's sneer widen.  
  
"Bound to your Puzzle, I could not speak what was truly on my mind. But if you had ventured just a little nearer to my heart, maybe you would have seen my emotions bared." Yami's deep eyes were filled with sorrow and hatred, yet Yugi couldn't look away. But the truth behind Yami's cruel words were piercing him. He couldn't cry, for the tears would blur his vision, nor could he turn away. There was nothing he could say to ease Yami's pain, so he stayed silent.  
  
Yami regarded Yugi with a coldly judging gaze. "Let someone else fight your pathetic battles," he told the suffering boy before him. "I have had enough of your weakness."  
  
Suddenly, Yugi's eyes flashed up. "Weak?" he cried. "You never told me I was weak!" He struggled from the shadows' grip. "Or is that another truth that I 'forced' you not to tell me?!" His voice was thick with indignation and strife. "You must have done an awfully good job of concealing your thoughts!" he said, hotly, all concern for Yami forgotten.  
  
Yami bristled. "How would you have understood what I was feeling? You never knew me; not at all!" he accused, his cold demeanor crackling with sudden energy. Tears slid heavily down Yugi's face. "How can you say that?! We were partners! We shared Soul Rooms!!" he cried passionately. "And now you can't remember any of it, and you-" He stopped abruptly, another realization hitting him. "You steal people's souls!!" he gasped, a fresh wave of emotion bringing salty liquid to his lips. "How could you do something like that?!"  
  
"The question is not how, but why. Although according to your treatment of this situation, you have probably not given the matter much consideration!" Yami snapped, the heat rushing from his eyes. "As for the virus... You were to be its first intended victim."  
  
Yugi's breath came shallow. "What?" Yami didn't pause. "I was going to consume your soul first, as a means of exacting my revenge. But you did not retain the Puzzle in your posession, as I had anticipated you would." Yami shrugged, regretfully. Yugi stared at him. "The Puzzle..." he breathed softly. "Then... someone else must have..."  
  
There was a momentary break in the cold fire between the two, as Yugi thought in chilled disbelief. Yami said nothing.  
  
"......You can't be Yami," Yugi finally said, slowly raising his head to meet his charger's steady gaze. "Yami would never abandon me. Yami would never try to steal the souls of the entire city. Yami would never..." And here Yugi had to pause, to contain himself. "...Yami would never have tried to kill me!"  
  
"I don't know who you are, but you aren't Yami!!" Yugi shouted, eyes blazing. "Where is he?!"  
  
To Yugi's surprise, there was little change in the other's expression. The dark figure didn't smile, but instead merely spoke quietly into the turbulent air.  
  
"I am Yami. Can you not see it?"  
  
And to Yugi's horror, he could see it. Violet mirrored violet as the two held eachother's gaze, and across that bridge, Yugi could see Yami's eyes reflected in the dark face of the other. Pleading and proud and broken and haughty, it was Yami who stared unflinchingly back into Yugi's tearstained face.  
  
It was Yugi who broke eye contact first, not able to confront the horrible truth that lay before him. But the fact that he had seen something else, something not quite human in those eyes, strengthened him.  
  
"Why are you doing this, Yami?" Yugi asked, despairingly. "I thought I knew you. I really tried. But... I guess..." His desperate apology was cut off as Yami waved his hand, impatiently. "I have no time for this. Depart my Soul Room at once."  
  
Yugi, not quite believing that Yami wanted to be rid of him so quickly and with such a dismissive air, gestured hopelessly. "...Yami... Please listen to me. I'm really sorry. You won't believe how much I hate the fact that I hurt you..." He paused, gathering the words. "But now you're free to say anything you want!" he cried, earnestly. "So won't you stop all this? Come back to me. I need you, Yami... Really, I..."  
  
Yugi faltered at the total absence of compassion or forgiveness on Yami's face. "...Yami..." he whispered, pleadingly. "Yami, I need you..."  
  
As these words dropped from his mouth like stones, falling on uncaring ears, something seemed to pluck them out of the air.  
  
Following this, the link snapped into place again; momentarily, but just long enough for Yugi to see the shadowed stone walls and intangible depths of the prison within Yami's mind.  
  
"Where?........" Yugi gasped, reeling with the sharpness and clarity of the vision. He knew he was closer to the other soul, and he now realized that this cruel apparition hovering before him was not at the opposite end of the link. 


	36. The Shadow Sentries

Chapter 36  
  
Before the Yami look-a-like could react, Yugi tore free of the grip of the shadows and darted forward.  
  
Yugi noticed that although his movements were slow and awkward, his opponent didn't try to deter him. Rather, he wafted backwards slightly as Yugi ran past, turning his head to smirk at him down the hallway.  
  
Huh? Yugi thought, and kept going. "Yugi," said the dark Yami, and the sound was coming from everywhere at once; it seemed as if every single particle of stone in the Soul Room were resonating with the smooth, gilded timbre of Yami's voice. The floor vibrated under the soles of Yugi's feet as he ran blindly forward, with only the dimmest sense of where to go next.  
  
"Yugi," the voice continued, and there was a faint undertone of dark amusement in the words, "What makes you so sure you will find your way through this labryinth? This is, after all, purely my domain. I control it..." Here, the room seemed to shiver with laughter, "....and whatever happens to stray within its walls."  
  
Yugi gasped, tears blurring his vision, and pelted down the corridor to his immediate right. Shadows rose up to greet him; shrouded and opaque, haunting mercenaries with which to smother unsuspecting intruders. Some took the form of the Dark Magician; others resembled nothing in the way of reality, but merely loomed ominously over the fleeing boy. Yugi stepped back, acidic adrenaline shooting through his veins.  
  
The walls, obscured by these dark minions, shimmered with mirthless satisfaction. "Nobody knows these entwined passageways better than I," the dark Yami informed Yugi quietly, stepping out from between two of his sentries. "Those who tresspass these places never live to see their end."  
  
"Their souls are still here; make no mistake, they live, and weep, and rue the day they met me. Yet they are only one sum of a much greater whole- That is I." Yami extended an arm slightly out to the side, as if in welcome. "The Shadow Realm keeps them imprisoned in my mind... Like an anchorage for the energy I need to survive."  
  
"Is it you, or Yami who is talking?" Yugi demanded, hoping to stall his dark adversary until he could figure out a way to bypass him and find the real Yami. The figure before him smiled slightly, as if he already knew what Yugi was thinking. "Must we play these games together?" he asked, simply. "I have played enough games to span a thousand lifetimes. It has gone on too long. I wish for it to end, for it all to be finally over...."  
  
Silence reigned the halls. His face now devoid of happiness whatsoever, Yami let his arms drop to his sides. In that position, he looked strangely vulnerable.  
  
"I am so tired," he whispered, gazing straight into Yugi's eyes.  
  
Up until this point, Yugi had held his opponent as nothing more than an illusion meant to be defeated; an obstacle blocking the path towards the truth and hopefully retribution. But now, as this strange entity faced him and stared sorrow into the darkness, Yugi felt doubt seeping into his mind.  
  
Yami swept his arm out to the side, right into the middle of one of his shadowed servants, and dropped his head. The sudden motion caused Yugi to start. "I hate you," Yami breathed, his words tight with the intensity of his emotions. It wasn't clear who he was referring to as he said this.  
  
Yugi hesistated; then, every fibre of his being tingling with the strangeness of it, moved forward into the dark cluster of shadows. He walked slowly past Yami, who didn't move, and pushed through the darkness until he emerged into a familiar chamber.  
  
He stared at the massive stone door at the other end of the room, and noted that the opening was now considerably larger than it had been the last time he had been here. That time seemed millenia away, he thought; longing for the past rose in his throat, and he trembled.  
  
Starting forward, unable to see past the doorway, Yugi stooped down to have a closer look inside.  
  
"Do prisoned ghosts dream of empty pasts?" said the voice behind him, softly. Yugi ignored it.  
  
All his trepidition and doubts, however, were swiftly undercut by the sight that flared suddenly in Yugi's mind's eye. The bridge between him and the other soul was now the distance of but a mere scramble under a stone, and Yugi could wait no longer.  
  
Without pause or time to think, Yugi had flattened himself under the door and had pushed his way into the deepest darkness of all.  
  
"Yami!!"  
  
Such was his attention focused on the limp figure lying against the wall that Yugi failed to notice the door arcing slowly downwards, almost ponderously, and with a final muffled thud that reverbrated throughout the entire labryinth, sealing itself closed once more. 


	37. Reviving the Light

Chapter 37  
  
The ghost opened his eyes in shock. This slight movement was all he had the strength for; but there was someone else in the room with him, and it wasn't his darker self. Then who could it...  
  
The unknown figure was kneeling by his head. "Yami?" it whispered, leaning down. The ghost shifted, feebly. It could no longer remember who it was, nor the identity of this hauntingly familiar person. It had once know, a long time ago- or at least what seemed like a long time ago. Why bother with recall? Did it really matter?  
  
Yugi watched in horror as Yami started to cough, with deep, shuddering motions. Something clinked near the wall. Reaching over Yami's back to try and support him, Yugi's hand brushed the object. It felt cold, hard, mettalic. He picked it up. It was a chain.  
  
Following the heavy links with his fingers, Yugi percieved that they led from the wall to a metal collar fastened tight around Yami's neck. He yanked on it; it seemed strong enough to hold up a house.  
  
"Yami... Who did this to you?" Yugi whispered to his companion, who was half curled up on his side, breathing heavily. At least, Yugi thought it was Yami. There was something wrong with him. Yugi put a hand out and gently shook Yami's shoulder. "Yami-"  
  
Something dripped on his hand, the hand that was resting on the ground by his side, near Yami's head. Yugi lifted his forearm, inspecting the liquid. Something dark was trickling down the back of his wrist; something that looked suspiciously like blood. He looked back down at Yami, whose head was no longer facing him, but had turned to the ground as he was once again racked with a coughing fit.  
  
Frozen with fear, Yugi grappled with Yami's heaving shoulders. "Yami!!" he shouted, urgently; could he be heard in the stillness and the dark? "Yami," he said, just as urgently, with less volume. "Yami, look at me."  
  
Yami lifted his head in miniscule increments, with great effort. Yugi stared at him.  
  
Who was this? Who was this, wild-eyed, hunted and afraid; broken and bleeding, who could this nightmarish, barely tangible being be? And why couldn't Yugi see himself in that face, as he had with the other in the corridor?  
  
This couldn't be Yami. But then why did Yugi feel so close to him...  
  
Yugi, limp with shock and horror, slowly let his arms fall to his sides. The body he had been supporting slumped heavily into Yugi's chest, and Yugi could hear the ghost's rasped breathing in his ear. The ghost had his left sleeve clenched in trembling fingers, as if it were the only lifeline it had left. There was a final, rapid heartbeat of recognition-  
  
Yugi shoved the ghost away, with both hands. Its back struck the wall with a surprisingly solid impact, and it slid halfway back to the floor, managing to stop itself on one elbow. The chain scraped against the wall, rasping metallically.  
  
Sobbing, Yugi buried his face in his hands. No, no, no! He couldn't have come all the way here for nothing but a Yami changed out and inwardly, and an empty shell in a darkened prison! Where was the strong, proud Yami he had known? How could seperation alter him this much?  
  
The ghost watched him, with an unreadable expression on its face. Yugi couldn't look at it- How could he? It stood for all the things that Yugi had feared most; the weakness and frailness in himself, the failures and freefalls he had endured before Yami's arrival. All the insecurity, and daytime terrors, running rampant through his mind, finally summed up into the most cruel of all forms; a mocking echo of Yugi's only strength, made weak.  
  
Yugi could stand it no longer. He reached up swiftly, evoking a small cry of surprise from the other's throat, and pushed the ghost's shoulders back into the wall; anger and disappointment combining to add force to the action. The ghost gasped, closing its eyes tight, but said nothing.  
  
Pressing the ghost tight against the wall, Yugi screamed as loud as he could. Screamed until his throat ached and tears were soaking the ghost's ragged collar. Cried and cried, clenching the thin fabric and the ghost's thin shoulders beneath it; it flinched with the pain of Yugi's grip, but Yugi didn't relax his hold for a second.  
  
The ghost felt nothing but confusion. A neutral state, but one enhanced by this stranger, whose emotions were alien and yet evocative of lost memories. A mass of contradictions swam through its mind. It wanted to be left alone, yet this situation begged its fractured attention span. There was no point in recall, yet there was something it had forgotten that was immensely crucial. Or was it? Had the reasons been lost, too? Its wrist throbbed, painfully.  
  
Something briefly lit up the stranger's tear-stained face, then died.  
  
Yug stopped crying, still shuddering and gasping with his face half buried in the ghost's shoulder. The link had flared again, emotions and imagery bursting like a ray of sunlight in his mind. He took one hand off the ghost and put it against his chest, trying to control himself. What was going on?  
  
Breath quickening, Yugi reached down to where the source of the connection had emitted. His questing fingers encountered the cloth of the ghost's pocket.  
  
Fumbling slightly, not wanting to alarm the prisoner more than he already had, Yugi slipped two fingers inbetween the folds of fabric and pulled out what felt like a small sliver of stone. He hefted its surprisingly heavy weight, touching it gently, rubbing the slim contours and delicate edges. At his touch, the shard seemed to give off a faint glow.  
  
The ghost stared, wide-eyed. That light... Golden light...  
  
"Yu... Yugi?"  
  
Yugi started, almost dropping the shard. "Aah!!" He turned his head and regarded the prisoner, warily. That was the first time that he had heard the ghost's voice; it sounded dusty and unused. How long had it been here, sealed away in Yami's mind? Was this what had been hidden in the Stone Door chamber, all this time? Yugi wondered.  
  
"Who are you?" Yugi asked, moving closer and gripping the shard in one hand. The ghost peered up at him, one eye obscured by the fall of his hair. "...I do not... remember..." it said, in a thin, barely audible voice. Yugi wiped salty traces from his cheek. "You aren't... Yami?" he pressed further, hope and apprehensiveness locked together in his eyes. The ghost hesitated, struggling with the words.  
  
"...I...am...."  
  
The stone in Yugi's hand had grown warm at the mention of Yami's name. Yugi looked at it, an idea suddenly forming in his mind. He held it in his palm, and rubbed it with his other hand. His reflection shone out of the black surface of the shard, and at the same time, a face appeared in the ghost's mind, clicking into place like the tumblers of an ancient lock.  
  
"If you remember me... Maybe you'll remember everything else..." Yugi whispered, staring into the stone. The ghost's eyes deepened in volume, as if gathering information from an outside source. "This is the remnants of our connection, after all. If I can revive it, then maybe my memories will reflect in yours, somehow..." Yugi concentrated on the task, gripping the shard and trying to keep his hand steady.  
  
Yami felt something blossom in his mind.  
  
"You said your name!" Yugi cried, joyfully; neither of them knew what signifigance that carried, but all Yugi cared about now was getting Yami back to him. He looked at Yami's face, and saw himself reflected violet in twin eyes.  
  
"Yugi..." Yami sighed, with the last of his breath. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the dry wall, the name he had uttered coating his mind with familiar images; once again in context, devoid of their shadows. He could hear Yugi beginning to cry again, and the sound was enough to make him open his eyes, once and briefly.  
  
Yugi was laughing as his tears mixed matter with the dust on the floor. Yami's mouth lifted, slightly, in a smile, and then his energy gave out and he fell into a slumber absent of its usual haunts.  
  
He slept. 


	38. Escape

Chapter 38  
  
Yugi sat by Yami's side, half dozing, half caught in restless doubt.  
  
They needed to find a way out of the room, before the other Yami caught on to what they were doing. And there were still too many questions, almost as many as before.  
  
On a sudden impulse, Yugi leaned over and shook Yami awake. Yami awoke very slowly; too slowly. Yugi glanced at him, worry and fear piercing the happiness of being reunited. What was wrong with him? How could this have happened? If this was really Yami, then something had gone horribly wrong. Yami wasn't like this...  
  
Stop it, Yugi told himself. We've already made it clear that this is Yami, because he has memories that the other doesn't seem to recall... And finding out what happened to him is just part of this whole identity thing, not part of who Yami really is. Wait. Does that make sense?..........  
  
Yugi groaned and put his hands to his head. They needed more time. Yami's doppleganger had probably taken over half the city by now. They needed to find a way out of this prison, and fast.  
  
Yami was dropping back off to sleep. Yugi grabbed his arm, holding it firmly to keep his former partner from slipping back into the darkness.  
  
It's cruel... All he wants is peace.  
  
But then, so does his darker counterpart.  
  
Or so he says, Yugi reminded himself, struggling with the task of simeltaneously supporting Yami's weight and formulating a plan to escape. His eyes searched the area around them, wildly. There had to be some way out!  
  
His frantic gaze landed on the chain, embedded in the wall. His heart sank. There was no way he was going to be able to pull that out...  
  
Letting his hand drop to the floor, he hit the memory shard with his wrist. It skittered a few feet away, and Yugi grabbed it before it disappeared in the shadows. In doing so, he pierced his hand on the sharp point. "Gah...."  
  
As the blood dribbled darkly from the wound, Yugi's escape plan came into focus.  
  
Staring upwards, Yugi looked at the place where the chain met the wall. Getting to his knees, and leaning over the recumbant Yami, he slowly raised the shard in his right hand. Aiming as well as he could in the shifting darkness, he brought the point of the obsidian sliver down hard, right where the metal met stone.  
  
The shard rebounded off the hard surface, with a clear, unnatural ringing sound. Yami moved his head slightly, senses disturbed by the loud intrusion. Yugi bent down and shook him again. "Yami," he said, desperately, "I need you to concentrate on our memories together. Now."  
  
Yami mumbled something unintelligable and dragged himself, painfully, into a semi-crouch. He looked at Yugi, blearily. He was still weak, Yugi realized. Recall may be easier for him now, but he still has holes in his memory, and the shadows are sapping his strength...  
  
Like they are mine, he thought, panic flooding his chest. They had to get out.  
  
"Yami, please!! Listen! You have to think, to remember. I need the connection to get us out of here." He stared, pleadingly, into Yami's bewildered face. It was like trying to explain algebra to a child. Yugi couldn't believe this was happening; roles had definitely been switched, and it wasn't making his job any easier.  
  
"Look, Yami. I'm going to try and seperate you from this room. But the only way I can do that is if the bond between you and I is stronger than that of your other self..." Yami's eyes had begun to wander. Yugi panicked. "Yami!!" Yami's movements were slow and reluctant. He turned to face his would-be saviour; would-be, if he would just cooperate!  
  
Yugi gritted his teeth. There had to be some way of getting Yami to understand what he was saying.  
  
In his frusteration, his hand was clenched on the floor, coating his fingers with the strange, exotic grittiness of the sandy surface. His skin tingled on contact, but he didn't notice, so intent was he on getting Yami to pay attention. This was proving to be one of the most difficult tasks he had come across so far; at least with the darker Yami, he could be angry and impatient to whatever degree he wanted. But he couldn't afford to hurt his friend again, and the restraints were putting a limit on the time they had left to get out.  
  
"Yami," he tried again, gently. He lifted Yami's thin wrist off the floor so that his hand hung suspended in the air. "Do you remember... this?" And, quickly, Yugi raised his own hand and gave Yami a high-five.  
  
Yami jerked back, but his eyes had been flooded with light during that brief encounter. Yugi's hopes flared again. "You remember?" he exclaimed, searching his former partner's face. "How about-"-Yugi raised his voice, "'It's time to Duel!!'"  
  
He watched in delight as Yami lifted his head to stare straight into Yugi's face, violet swirling with the effort of regaining a long-buried memory. But he remembered, and it was surfacing...  
  
It was quite some time before either of them noticed that the brightness of the shard had grown immensely.  
  
Yugi held it by the middle, clasping Yami's hand with his free one. Yami turned around to watch Yugi implement their escape, the chain rustling metallically behind him, concentrating as hard as his mind would allow on keeping the shard alive. And as the memories deepened in meaning and context, solidifying, he began to feel the shape of a sphere forming in his hands...  
  
The shard threw shafts of brilliance into the shadows, which deepened in protestation. it would only be a matter of time until the other Yami was alerted to their actions, but the walls of the prison were thick, and they still had a few precious moments to spare.  
  
Yugi raised the sliver above his head, squinting as the light rebounded off the metal of the chain and into his eyes; then, aiming for the place where the stone wall met the metal base of the chain, brought the point down hard.  
  
Half the light was dimmed as the shard embedded itself partway into the wall, jutting out from beside the remains of the metal base. Yugi released it and gasped; it had gone through the solid stone as if the wall were nothing but marshmallow filling...  
  
The chain that had connected Yami to the wall clattered to the floor, one end no longer attatched to an immovable object. But nether of the two were paying attention to that, as a far more amazing thing was happening before their eyes.  
  
The shard, still stuck point-first in the wall, kept radiating light... And cracks of it were beginning to spread out around it in an ever growing radius, the stone now being dissected into a million points of fractured lightning. The fractures, from hairline cracks, were widening, splitting the wall open, releasing shadows into oblivion...  
  
The floor shook slightly, and Yugi grabbed Yami's trembling shoulder and dragged him further away from the toppling wall. Chips of stone began to fly off its surface, and pelted the ground near their feet like mini hailstones. Yami clenched the globe to his chest, staring in avid fascination at the streaming light. Yugi looked down and saw it. "What's that and where did you get it from?!" he asked in astonishment, tearing his gaze from the wall. Yami didn't answer him.  
  
That golden boy...  
  
Flash.  
  
A large room, of some sort. Water, maybe?  
  
Flash.  
  
The light was the same, and yet somehow not the same. This light was younger... But it was the gold quality...  
  
"Yami?" Yugi said, worriedly. He wondered if the shard was having some sort of adverse effect on his friend's already precarious physical stability. Yami was swaying slightly, eyes wide as if in amazement, but at the same time unseeing. His hands were clenched around the black globe, which, as Yugi now saw, was covered in sharp, slender symbols.  
  
He was just about to ask again where Yami had gotten it from when an excruciatingly loud wrenching noise juttered through his head. Turning, frightened and awed, Yugi watched as the cracks emmnating from the shard imbedded in the stone finally connected with eachother, momentarily turning the wall into a gigantic, lightning crossed jigsaw puzzle.  
  
We solved it, Yugi thought contentedly, despite the shuddering floor and the inaudible screams of the shadows around them. Yami clenched his arm, the chain still trailing from his collar; Yugi noticed that the globe seemed to have disappeared in the confusion. It wasn't gone... Just out of sight, he knew.  
  
With barely a whisper, the shard flashed once with the tremendous force of a sudden revelation... and the wall disappeared for a moment under the burst of light that now filled the room.  
  
When the light dissapated, the wall was no longer there. 


	39. Out Of The Core

Chapter 39  
  
Yami collapsed against the wall, hands buried in his hair, fingers clenched white with pain. Unchecked light streaked through his head, faded, and ripped twice through, pressing nerve endings against his skull. He shuddered, convulsively.  
  
What are they doing... he raged, as the pain flashed in bursts behind his searing eyes. "Gahh..."  
  
In the rumbling corridors of his Soul Room, he stumbled through the darkness, relying on its patterns and intricacies to guide him through the labryinth. The noise and erratic movement of the pathways increased in intensity as he neared the source of the light, the core of the pain. With no place to support himself on, Yami slipped sideways and sprawled onto the heaving floor. He stayed there, trying to blot out the sounds of part of his Soul collapsing...  
  
That light! How had they revived it? I thought I had removed all traces of... Yami stopped, a part of him frozen away from the blinding pain. Yami Yugi... He had all the lost memories, awakened by the intruder...  
  
I should have killed them both.  
  
One part of Yami's mind knew, faintly, what was going on. The other was consumed by the noise, the crashing, the light, and seemed distant with the destruction taking place around him. Yami forced himself to his feet and limped towards the focus of his rage...  
  
In the core of the disturbance, all was not well.  
  
Yugi threw his arms around Yami, heaving them both upright. Yami seemed exhausted, and wasn't supporting enough of his own weight. Yugi gasped, struggling, and half carried half dragged his friend closer to the exit. His foot knocked against something; it was the shard.  
  
Lowering himself and Yami to the floor once again, Yugi reached out, straining, and managed to grasp the shard tightly in one hand. He slipped it into his pocket, and was about to start trying to encourage Yami to stand himself up when he noticed that something near them was moving.  
  
A swirl of activity was taking place near the gap where the wall had been. To Yugi's vast horror, he saw that the shadows were actually reconstructing the wall; gathering, seethingly crawling over eachother, they were regenerating the damage that the light had inflicted on the Soul Room.  
  
"Run!!" Yugi cried, yanking hard on Yami's arm. Yami stumbled and, with the help of the frantic Yugi, pulled himself to his feet... Too slowly! Too slowly! Yugi panicked and pushed Yami as hard as he could towards the exit, himself toppling behind, the shadows closing around them with ominous intent...  
  
A moment's confusion, and they were through. 


	40. Dark Intent

Chapter 40  
  
Yugi stared at the blank wall behind them, panting heavily and feeling his heartbeat tremoring throughout his whole body. He could feel Yami shaking against him, and knew that he was probably in the same state, if not worse.  
  
"...You did it... You recalled it all." Yugi threw his arms around Yami's shoulders, and he could feel himself beginning to cry again. "Yami," he sobbed into his partner's collar, feeling the cold metal of the chain pressing against his cheek, "tell me you're back..."  
  
Yami was so exhausted, he could do no more than weakly return Yugi's embrace, joints aching with all the strain they had been put through in the last few seconds. He needed to rest...  
  
The events they had just been involved in had been a bit awkward for Yugi. Never before had he been put in a situation where he had actually had to help Yami to the point at which he'd been driven then. Before, the only thing that Yugi could think of that Yami really needed him for was as a host body and constant companion; and since the latter wasn't all that necessary, from Yugi's logical point of view, it didn't really count. Perhaps this was why, when the other Yami had told Yugi that he no longer needed a partner, Yugi had been so easily swayed.  
  
Indeed, roles had been reversed, and the absolute speed at which the switch had occurred had left Yugi drained. And there was still the matter of returning Yami to his old self, finding his way back into his own body, and figuring out exactly what was going on in Domino...  
  
There was a dry rustling sound to their right. Yugi spun, the abrupt movement making his head ache again, and saw someone lying on the floor a good distance away from them; about halfway down the corridor that he and Yami were crouched in.  
  
Yugi was glad for the distance, because the figure was undoubtedly that of his persuer, the other Yami. The latter raised his dark head, with what seemed like a great deal of effort. He moves just like Yami, Yugi noticed, with a sickened realization. He put a hand protectively on Yami's back, ready to push him out of the way if their antagonist showed any signs of agression.  
  
What am I talking about? He's not a wild animal... But he's unpredictable, and he's dangerous. And we must have hurt him...  
  
The dark Yami was dragging himself to his knees, glaring at the two huddled on the floor before him. "...You came to save him, did you not?" he asked Yugi, a normally smooth voice roughened with pain and fatigue. "It is no more than an empty shell... And you... Why have you returned? I need you no longer..."  
  
"But Yami needs me, and you aren't Yami," Yugi shot back, with more force than he felt like implementing with what little energy he had left. "How could you do this to him? And who are you, anyway?!"  
  
The dark figure's mouth twitched in a half-smirk. Yugi interuppted him, knowing what he would say next. "Don't tell me you're Yami, because you aren't," Yugi said in an accusing voice, sitting near whom he felt for sure was the real Yami. "You have some of his attributes, sure, but that doesn't mean anything! You aren't at all who I remember him to be!"  
  
"And I suppose that thing you've got there is?" the dark figure intoned, crouched near a wall like a lithe, violet-eyed panther. Despite the wounds his Soul Room had undergone, he was still powerful, still vengeful... Yugi hesitated. "Well... Not exactly... But he remembers the times we shared together. I don't know why you don't. All you seem to remember is pain and darkness..."  
  
"That is all there really was, in the end," the dark figure agreed, morbidly. "You really think you have made a difference in millenia of sorrow?" This caused Yugi to pause, yet again. The other Yami's smirk grew wider, his eyes shining.  
  
"Him and I once shared a Soul; you must have realized that," he told Yugi, who checked himself and wondered if he had known it all along. The signs had been obvious, yet had he acknowledged them? Now he began to realize what had been hidden in the Stone Door chamber all along.  
  
The dark figure continued. "We have seperated, however... Just as we had seperated from you. And if I represent the darkness, the loss, the agony and torment, then am I not therefore dominant over the memories of you, which only that thing posesses?"  
  
Yugi's head spun. There was something not quite right about any of this. "Wait... You say that you were one. But why did you seperate in the first place?"  
  
The darkness of the other's memories clouded his eyes. Yet he still smiled, and replied, "You see, Yugi... You do not yet know the full truth."  
  
"Seperating was not the intent. We were to become one, truly one, again. To do this, I needed energy-" "The souls," Yugi interuppted, horrified. "That's why you needed them, isn't it?!"  
  
The dark Yami breathed into the following silence. "Do not condemn a man for eating, nor a fish for swimming," the figure finally said, looking into Yugi's face. He was no longer smiling.  
  
"Yes, the souls... I used them to fuel the merge between us. And yet, I waited not long enough. There was not enough energy within these walls to completely finish the fusion, and it stopped at the memories of light which you two shared." The other Yami paused to let this sink in, then went on, grimacing slightly. "In the end, your light was poison to me, Yugi.... It still is, as I am sure you have noticed. Since the part of me that had not fully been integrated into the other, part of the 'Yami Yugi' half, had all the memories of light, I was forced to seal it away."  
  
Still crouched in the shadows, the other Yami dropped his head slightly, still staring violet across the corridor. His face was darkened still further by the fall of his hair. "And that is all it is, Yugi. Memories of the past..."  
  
If the dark Yami had been about to say anything after that last vaguely ominous statement, he was interuppted by a sensation that all of them must have experianced at the same moment. Like a chilly thread suddenly being pulled through their heads, it faded almost as soon as it had entered; but looking at his antagonist, Yugi realized it must have been as foreign to the other as to himself.  
  
But with the unexpected coldness of that hairline streak through his mind came other knowledge. Residue of something buried deep in Yami's Soul Room? Yugi would never know, but it told him a part of the other Yami's tale left out.  
  
"...You're fractured..." "What?" snapped the other, raising his head to glare at Yugi from between the drops of his bangs. Yugi stared back, as if in a daze. "You're incomplete. No matter how powerful you are now, you're still nothing without this 'empty shell'." The Yami with the memories of Yugi's light, Yami Yugi, looked up, wearily. It had been dozing until the flash of frozen lightning had entered his mind, and was now relatively awake.  
  
The dark Yami had a black look upon his face; no trace of a grin played on those lips. "What are you talking about?" he snarled. "I no longer need your light. I no longer need either of you... In fact, I should have rid myself of both your souls!"  
  
Yugi was now smiling, meant to infuriate the other. With one hand behind his back, he prodded hard at Yami Yugi's side, urging him to get ready. Reluctantly, but sensing the urgency of Yugi's silent request, Yami Yugi got to his knees; peering over Yugi's shoulder, he caught his dark counterpart's eye, which flashed in warning. Yami Yugi trembled, but didn't avert his gaze.  
  
"It doesn't matter whether you need me or not. You said yourself: 'I'm poison to you now'..." Yugi threw his head back defiantly, arms outstretched. "And since Yami here has the light that you can no longer stand, what's to stop us from killing you and getting out of here?!"  
  
Yugi had never before in his life said something so bold, but he knew it was only a bluff, a ruse; a distraction to save both himself and Yami. And maybe even Domino, if we aren't too late, he reminded himself, feverishly. In response to Yugi's unspoken messages, he felt Yami Yugi's hand reach into his pocket, out of his dark counterpart's line of vision, and remove the shard from its hiding spot.  
  
Yami's darker half was scowling, but his eyes gleamed with the promise of playtime. Obviously, he hadn't noticed anything, so preoccupied with his task of defeating Yugi was he. "And what make you so sure you are capable of carrying that action out?" he sneered, knowingly. "Even as we speak, my virus still acts within your beloved city; and each precious second that you have wasted on your pathetic friend strengthens my power by a soul!"  
  
Shaking, but still staring his opponent in the eye, Yugi gently touched Yami Yugi's bared forearm, sending more unspoken messages through the contact of their skin. Get ready, he said, invisible currents swirling above and below them. He felt Yami shiver, steady himself.  
  
Remember the past, for it will save your life.  
  
At that moment, Yami's dark half must have realized that something was going on between the two at the opposite end of the hall. Rising to his feet, he glowered at them. "What-"  
  
Yami Yugi, who had been watching for this signal, thrust his hand concealing the shard into Yugi's waiting palm. Yugi closed his eyes...  
  
A brilliant flash of light sliced the darkness into a million folds of shade, which faded under the piercing brightness of the shard. An agonized scream was heard, dying away as the light gradually did from the hall, the shadows melting back once more to reclaim their territory. But it was too late.  
  
The light was being taken somewhere else.  
  
Somewhere deeper down, further in... 


	41. The Shifting Trap

Chapter 41  
  
Yugi and Yami Yugi ran down a fifth corridor, hands still clenched with the shard between them. All around were the rustles and swift flutters of shadow activity, alerting their master to their prescence and whereabouts. A brief flash from Yami Yugi's charged memories and they would be driven back momentarily, losing dark Yami's track of them for a few moments, but it soon became pointless and they just ran.  
  
Yami's voice echoed from every wall they passed, every stone they stepped over acting as a conductor. Confirming Yugi's fears, the darker Yami spoke of the control he had over the Soul Room, and what little hope they could expect of a safe journey. Yugi didn't doubt the voice, but he ignored them anyways and pressed on, half dragging Yami Yugi behind him.  
  
"Yugi- Why are we-" Yami Yugi panted, exhaustion draining his words away. Yugi understood and answered as quickly as he could, "We have to find the fracture!" They swerved into another passageway, which seemed identical to the one they had just left. Yami's laughter rang throughout the Soul Room, scattering dust particles in their path. "You are merely rats in an enclosed maze. Why? Just give up! Stop running!" He knows where we are, Yugi thought blindly, but ran anyway.  
  
Although he does have a point, Yugi realized.  
  
"Fracture?" Yami Yugi panted, lagging slightly. His chain was snaking along behind them; in a sudden burst of coherency, Yugi grabbed it and reeled in the end, wrapping it haphazardly around his arm as they pelted down the seemingly endless corridor.  
  
"He isn't complete! He's not whole!" Yugi gasped, pushing through the shadows and trying not to notice what form they were taking at this moment. Once he thought he saw a darkened Anzu, standing to his left, her black stare imploring him to just stay with her... Comfort her... Stop running, because I need you... and he almost tripped and fell.  
  
Yugi continued despite the thousands and thousands of distractions circling around them. "If I can find the place in his Soul Room where you were cut off, then maybe I can seperate the other part of you that exists in him, and rejoin that part with- wait- I'm sorry, Yami, I can't think!!" he cried wildly, pulling his partner down another path. The laughter didn't stop, but merely grew in volume, and then suddenly...  
  
All around them, the walls were collapsing. No, they weren't... They were folding, inverting, twisting in on themselves like a piece of origami composed by M. C. Escher. Yugi had to stop then, eyes wide in shock. Yami stumbled next to him, bent double and too fatigued to submit to his awe.  
  
The bizarre folding didn't stop. It seemed to bulge in places, swallowing itself and then vomiting other bits of the room up in places where they weren't meant to be. And it wasn't just an illusion; the floor heaved, was turning over itself, warping itself into a mobius strip.  
  
Yugi stared at this obscene dance between physics and surreality. Like a playhouse built in Wonderland, drenched in shadows, succumbed to their manipulations of reality and perspective, the room was a product of the ever shifting night.  
  
"We'll never get through this," Yugi whispered, more to himself than to his partner. His hand loosed its panicked grip, and the shard fell out from between their fingers, clattering to the stone below. Yugi didn't even look at it.  
  
"He was right. There's no point and there never will be. He controls this Soul Room, and if he doesn't want us to go somewhere than what's to stop him from preventing us?" Yugi slid to the floor, weariness finally sealing itself around his heart. "...I don't know anymore..." he whispered softly, eyes directed unseeingly at the metamorphosis before them. "I need to save you, Yami... But I don't know how anymore..."  
  
Yami stared at him, then reached down and slowly picked the shard off the floor. Holding it poised between two fingers, he held it out to his despairing partner. Yugi looked at it, incomprehendingly. Yami held it up for a few more moments, then opened his mouth.  
  
"Yugi..." The shard whispered with light in response to the name held within it. "You have already saved me, but..." Yami seemed to search for the words. "...saving him... is another matter."  
  
"Saving him?!" Yugi said, incredulously. Then his tone softened. "Well, I suppose that makes sense... Seeing as how most of you is part of him..." He shook his head. "Is it just me, or have our conversations been really weird lately?" Yami shrugged slightly, his exhaustion apparent on his face. He placed the shard gently on the ground, which seemed to twitch slightly in contact with its fading light, and dropped his head into his arms, resting.  
  
Vaguely disturbed that the once strong Yami, so full of victorious energy and vitality, could now be reduced to... Yugi shook off that train of thought as quickly as possible. It was hard, though, when he remembered all that Yami had been before this had occurred... As if to try and forgive himself for thinking unworthy thoughts, Yugi laid his hand on Yami's lax wrist, watching his friend drift into a safer place.  
  
He knew that, when the time came, they would be off and running once more. It could happen at any second, for that shadowed figure was still watching them, waiting for the opportunity to strike. If he were to catch them now, it would all be over. But perhaps, as long as they had the shard with them, the dark Yami would think twice before coming nearer. Yet with every minute they spent dozing, their pursuer was one step closer to figuring out a way of destroying the shard and killing them both...  
  
Yugi stared out at the oppressive room in front of them, shifting and changing, unpredictably and with no semblance of a pattern whatsoever. All the infinite combinations of its atoms were used once, and then lost in the second wave of inversions and perpetual motion. And soon, very soon, they would have to face it, in order to bring back what Yami had lost...  
  
Well, when that time comes, we'll do it. We'll find the fracture, and we'll save it all, somehow...  
  
But for now, let us be. 


	42. Dreaming Of Gold And Other Things Twice ...

Chapter 42  
  
The city was waiting.  
  
No longer trapped in an ever-tightening spiral towards empty, haunted greyness, the buildings and the people now were slowly dying in anticipation for something. Still spiralling, yes... But hope, existant in the hearts of but a few blessed residents, quietly sat, shimmering in the dark, and steadying itself on the possibility of redemption.  
  
Katsuya Jonouchi, Hiroto Honda, Ryou Bakura and Sugoroku Mutou attended the mass funeral for Domino's deceased. Among the deaths was the still and silently cooling corpse of Anzu Mazaki; devoid of a soul, the body could hold out no longer, and had withered away into a permanent state of unconsciousness.  
  
For her soul the city did weep, and for her soul the shadows fluttered in triumph, rustling quietly in the dusk.  
  
The shadows wait, but they also watch.  
  
The new master of the dark, the Watchman, cast his deep gaze over the sleeping souls of the two last lights in the city, their presence weighing heavily in his mind. In the physical realm, he brooded, weakened and confined, chilled by the outside air and poisoned by the gold within. He waited, and watched, planning and resting...  
  
Weary and tired, the brighter of the lights slept, still aware of the darkness pressing in around them. Waiting was all he could do, and all there was left now... The city rested in his dreams, heavy and foreboding, the loss of its soul bearing even further down on his already straining consciousness. Several souls lost marked the greatest weight of all, and it was her face instead of that tangible darkness that swam unchecked throughout the boy's nighttime fears...  
  
For his soul the city waited, and for his soul the shadows fluttered, uneasily. Could he be touched, caught, held in a cage as deftly as one could trap a beam of sunlight? They waited for his light to fade...  
  
And the last of the three, the third mirror in the triad; he was there, and he was not. Born from the darkness and raised now in the light- or was it the other way around? For him the shadows flapped, unsure now, angry because of their hesitation. He must be eliminated, yet, he is one of us... And what is he? Ghost? Spirit? Shadow sentry, master or pawn?  
  
The thickness of their oppressive nature closed around the last of the three, watching him, fearing him, caressing him. The shadows darknened in their examination, pausing fretfully. The master was watching. Who was it? They pressed in further, staunching the light for a fraction of a nothingth of a period of time...  
  
The city saw the last light fluctuate, and was held, precariously, in the balance between stability and chaos, life and death, darkness and light. It existed in greyness, a neutral position, swaying ever closer to one or the other. It waited patiently as it died, over and over and over, the same place in the spiral marking a signifigant absence, a hole, a void...  
  
And of all this Yami Yugi dreamed, unceasingly, lyrical spiders spinning delicate threads of light between the cracks of the darkness infusing his mind. Seeing nothing as he floated, occasionally finding images once or twice lost; songs sung, not by him... But by another...  
  
Suspended, he hung, watching it unfold around the inside of his soul. Daylight flickered at the corner of his mind's eye; he spun, drifting in the abyss, where there transpired secrets and hidden treasures concealed from his gaze.  
  
Frusterated by the inacessibility of his own memories, Yami Yugi struggled, grasping at and taking away nothing. He then noticed he already had something in his hand.  
  
Gently, for fear everything would shatter apart- such was the delicacy of his world at that pinpoint in time!- he opened his palm. The shard rested against his skin, warm and slender, the darkness holding barely glimpsed gold.  
  
That gold was locked away in his mind, he knew. The knowledge was killing him, continuously; the more his mind dwelled on it, the more it ate away at his soul. In his dreaming state, watching, waiting, he twisted, particles brushing past his bare arms. Everything was so spread out...  
  
A glow transifxed his gaze. The shard lifted from his hand, shimmering, and began to float away. Yami followed it, not sure where it was leading him, but afraid to lose it even for a moment.  
  
It stopped in midair; midair, like everything else in the night was hung in. Yami stopped too, watching it, waiting for it to come back. The shard turned on its axis, delicately probing the darkness with its tapered head, until it had rotated nearly full circle to point at something beyond Yami Yugi's sight.  
  
Leaning forward slightly, Yami saw that the shard was indicating something to him... What was it? A bead, a dot, a pinprick of light.  
  
Unlocked memories streaming golden across his mind...  
  
Loose and unchecked, swimming, revealed and yet unfound...  
  
Perspective warped loosely around Yami's vision as he reached over countless miles, aeons and lightyears, and, with a single sharp pluck unhindered by his unwoken state, took the star-like point of light out of the surrounding darkness into which it had been held.  
  
A black globe rested firmly in his hand. He had pinched it with two fingers and yet it was the size of a bowling ball, of a planet, of a solar system, the size of the flame burning on a candle. It glowed with an inner light, deeper and brighter than the shard. This ball was greater than the sum of its parts, greater than the millions of combinations of shards that made up its gently curved structure.  
  
Feeling the coolness of this nighttime treasure, mysterious and ineffable in the dark, Yami traced the bladed inscriptions carved into its otherwise unbroken surface. Like a lost ghost moving silently through the path of its mind, like water running through the great incision of a once dry riverbed, Yami's fingers quested, flowing, tumbling gracefully through the deeper parts of the night...  
  
And in doing so, he had reached into the darkest place in his soul; he had grasped gold, tasted light and conquered something within him that he never would have faced alone... His memories were revealed now, in all their blazing glory, locked within those silent and perfectly spherical vessels of obsidian glass. He could find them now... Not all of them were there, but there was enough gold to share with the sun, re-fuel a galaxy, outshine the heavens...  
  
The globe, carrying a memory of a young boy and his ancient partner battling their enemies back to back and side by side, grew heavier with light under Yami's sleeping hand; his dreams filling it with unwritten, unspoken emotions shared with another.  
  
Yugi hadn't seen it, hadn't felt it. This was his connection too, but it had been Yami Yugi's own dance, an avengement made in the depths of unconscious slumber. The globe upon which Yami Yugi's hand was resting, having been formed by unwaking battles with private demons, seemed to move under its own power-  
  
It slipped out from under Yami's loose and oblivious grip, and rolled into the room of shifting death. Wherever its steady glow touched, the stone beneath ceased its chaotic movements, tamed by the past visions of battling exotic creatures and outlandish foes. The globe still glided silently down the chamber, stilling the frenzied heavings of the floor, smoothing out a safe path for those who would cross to reclaim its power...  
  
Finally, it stopped, the only noise having been made emitting from the soft tap of obsidian meeting the unyielding stone at the opposite end of the room. Around the bridge made from its light, the walls still juttered menacingly, still wrecked havoc with the ceiling and the parts of the floor untouched by the memory globe's trail.  
  
A path of unmoving stone now bisected the shifting room.  
  
Yugi awoke then, at that barely audible encounter of light and dark against cold Soul Room stone. He awoke, staring at the dangers beyond, and at the safe conduct that awaited their arrival.  
  
There was a faint rustling noise; Yugi spun, alarmed. Yami Yugi had aroused himself, and as he met Yugi's awed gaze, something was reborn between them...  
  
Yugi looked back at the solid trail that Yami Yugi had created. Dreaming, hoping and searching, Yami Yugi had found the solution to the puzzle, the illusionary trap that the darker Yami had set before them.  
  
The period of waiting was done. It was time to move on, further into the shadows across a bridge made of memories of a time twice forgotten. And what they would find on the other side would be concealed until they got there... 


	43. The Shadows Rise

Chapter 43  
  
Restrained by the continually growing light, caught in the cold and racked with pain, Yami leaned against one of Domino's less attractive buildings, shivering.  
  
It wasn't the outside chill that was touching him... There was a lifeforce within his soul that was seeking a way to stop his escape, cancel out his hopes for freedom with a golden flash of light. He couldn't let that happen... He was so close now, and getting closer! But so were they...  
  
Now it was all a matter of whose dreams spiralled to reality first.  
  
Yami drank in the night, steadying his gaze against the whirling, star sprawled backdrop above his head. Tried to forget the pains shooting through his mind, his body. As a spirit in his own Soul Room, he was practically immobilized, and could do no more than watch through his minions' eyes as his two opponents wrecked havoc with his carefully crafted works.  
  
He could barely stand it; he couldn't let them destroy what he had spent over three thousand years trying to do! It was unthinkable... He'd have to kill them, or at least eradicate their souls from his own. Revenge was now out of the question, if he was going to finish what he had originally intended to do. Yami Yugi and his former partner...  
  
Arms wrapped around himself in the freezing night air, Yami couldn't put those two out of his head. Why had Yugi come back? What was the point? Yami Yugi needs him no more than I do, Yami thought, absently. But no wonder the shadows did not assimilate his essence. He had the memories of Yugi's light encased within his soul... If I had absorbed that, then...  
  
Not even Yami could fathom what would have happened then. He didn't wish to know, and didn't care, either. All that was left was the night around him and the poison light running deadly paths through his head; the latter of which he had to get rid of quickly, or surrender the victory he'd been tasting for the last few days.  
  
The virus still runs throughout the city, he reminded himself, eyes closing. It strengthens me still...  
  
And yet...  
  
What are they doing now?  
  
Yami's eyes flashed open as the faintest scent, the meanest ghost of a glimpse of gold was caught for a millisecond in his senses. With its presence came the pain, swift and sharp, cutting through several of his defenses. It was growing brighter...  
  
In the waning darkness of his Soul Room, Yami stumbled back against a wall, the light now piercing the very stone. He bent over, hands to his head, gritting his teeth with the concentration of alleviating the sensation of the firey needles radiating from their glowing source. The pain peaked, and then something went sliding down one of the rooms far off in the depths of his Soul Room; one of the core centers of the shadow activity, no less! Where was it? He couldn't see, feel, hear anything-  
  
The Shifting Trap chamber had been divided down the middle by a streak of light- he could feel its location now!- and Yami pressed himself to the ground, pinned to its surface by the pain echoing back and forth across that immeasureable distance, the stone now merely a vessel for these flowing, piercing arrows...  
  
Gasping, Yami tried to push himself to his knees; the pain was causing gravity to multiply itself a hundred fold. Weakly, he managed to support himself on his elbows, raising his head with the effort it took most people to lift a dishwasher. His head was throbbing and his vision blurred continuously; where were his shadows? His puppets?  
  
Driven back by the light, the darkness returned to their master, wavering and weakened. The light was too strong... It blinded them, made them useless...  
  
Yami shook his head furiously and began the long, slow process of getting himself upright. His strength was still contained within the walls... But he couldn't use any of it, not yet! It was unbearable, having to wait for that delicious moment... When he could finally tap into those depths, murky with thousands upon thousands of captured souls. And then he'd be free...  
  
His anticipation hung in the air, terrible and consuming. The timing of the eclipse that was to come would have to be perfect, and it would all be ruined if he missed this opportunity.  
  
I have been waiting for five thousand years.  
  
A funnel of darkness spiralled throughout the corridors as Yami breathed these last words. Circling, it seemed to form the shape of an eye, an ancient symbol unused for millenia, before fading back into the single sheet of shadows near the obscured ceiling. Something rustled.  
  
Yami stood up, slowly. He looked around, violet orbs gleaming with hidden currents of darkness, razoring the pulsing stone walls with his gaze. Senses renewed, he could feel them, at the edge of his pain, at the edge of his defeat. He took a step down the path of least resistance.  
  
My life then shall not be wasted to the light... 


	44. Seperation

Chapter 44  
  
Still frightening in its reality warping complexity, the Shifting Room continued its mad dance before them; the walls weaved and the ceiling buckled, as if in a challenge. Yugi and Yami Yugi stared at it in horrified fascination.  
  
"We'll have to cross it," Yugi murmured, crouched in the wide entrance. He looked doubtfully at the strip of unmoving stone that bridged both sides of the room. It was barely large enough to place a toaster oven on it without having some part of it destroyed by the looping convulsions of the floor.  
  
Yami Yugi's gaze was focused on the black sphere lying against the opposite wall. He started forward, longingly, but Yugi barred his way with an outstretched arm.  
  
"Yami..." he said, softly. "You can't go with me."  
  
Stepping back, his friend stared at him, arms hanging loosely at his sides. His translucency was no longer so prominent, but Yugi could still see the wall, faded by Yami Yugi's skin, on the other side of that pale figure. "What?" Yami Yugi whispered, looking down at Yugi.  
  
Sighing, Yugi turned away from the insanity that was their final obstacle. "Yami, let me explain. You can't cross. If I do manage to seperate the other Yami into two different beings, you have to be there to take back your half self. Otherwise, who knows what will happen? He might just absorb it again." Yugi looked up at his friend, imploringly. "I'm really sorry," he added. "I just don't see any other way we can do this..."  
  
Yami Yugi just stared at him. "You do not know anything about the system he has employed to mix and match souls the way he does. What makes you so confident that this is neccessary?" Yugi stood up, still having to tilt his head back to meet Yami Yugi's gaze. He opened his mouth, faltering. "I... really don't know," he admitted, breaking his eye contact with Yami Yugi. "Look, my guess is probably as good as yours. We have to take a chance here! There's no other way of getting around it!"  
  
Yugi's voice had raised itself without him noticing. But the worst of Yugi's idea was still yet to come, and he didn't want to have to see Yami Yugi's face when he told him.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Yugi swivelled around and began pacing in front of Yami Yugi, who continued to look at his friend as if he'd never seen him before. Preturbed by Yami's silence, Yugi stopped and exhaled heavily. "Yami-" That was all he could get out. He tried again. "Yami... I need you to do... uh..." Yami Yugi's head turned as Yugi moved to his right, beginning to pace again.  
  
"Yami, I need you to go back to him."  
  
Yugi wasn't the only one whose breath had stopped, momentarily, as both of them contemplated the results that returning to the injured Darker Yami might be.  
  
"I'm sorry, but you have to-" Yugi started to plead, but Yami Yugi had dropped to his knees before him. "I cannot," he stated, looking at the floor. "Yami..." Yugi said, sadly. He kneeled by Yami. "You've got to, Yami... If you don't, then who will be there to take advantage of the seperation? I'm sorry. I don't get it very well, but judging by the information I've been getting lately, it's only logical that you be there if or when the seperation happens!" Yugi paused, trying to catch Yami's downcast eye. "...Yami?"  
  
Yami Yugi turned away, and Yugi's heart sank. He followed with Yami's movements as he twisted his gaze away, and even went as far as to grab Yami's shoulders in an effort to get him to cooperate. Voices clammered in his head- It's no use... He's stubborn, he's weak and he doesn't want to keep going down the path of most resistance... But he has to! I know it...  
  
"You've been through so much," Yugi murmured, bowing his head. Yami Yugi didn't move under his hands. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." Yugi's voice trailed off to a softly repeated apology, over and over, under his breath. Wetness dropped one, twice, onto the back of Yami Yugi's limp hand.  
  
Gently, Yami Yugi pushed the quietly sobbing Yugi away. Yugi sat before him, back arched, face hidden by his hair as he cried. Yami Yugi slowly lowered his hands, raised in midair, an action captured in time.  
  
When Yugi finally looked up, face glistening with silent tears, Yami Yugi was no longer there. 


	45. The Last Obstacle

Chapter 45  
  
The shadows circled cautiously, as they watched the young boy preparing his long journey across the Shifting Room.  
  
Yugi looked down at the small strip of stability that awaited his first step. On either side, the stones wrecked havoc with reality, convulsing and heaving in a way that made Yugi's head spin just looking at them. Shakingly, he averted his eyes and tried to concentrate only on the unmoving path...  
  
Trembling, Yugi slowly slid his foot from the shelter of the entrance chamber and onto the bridge. To his relief, nothing collapsed. The stone felt firm, and held what little weight he cared to put on it.  
  
Here goes nothing...  
  
Moving his leg forward, Yugi felt something poking his skin through the fabric of his pants pocket. Startled, he reached in and pulled out the offending object.  
  
Heavy and streamlined in his hand, the shard glinted with the light of an unseen source.  
  
No... Yugi thought, looking across the room. The source is there... As if activated by his thoughts, the obsidian globe glowed, distantly. Yugi felt the shard grow in energy, responding to the sphere's call from the other end of time.  
  
If Yami gets hurt...  
  
Yugi's hand shook, and he almost dropped the shard onto the destructive movement of the Shifting Room's floor. If he gets hurt, it's all my fault. If he dies, if he's imprisoned again, if the darker Yami absorbs him-  
  
I can't go on.  
  
Yugi felt himself sliding to the floor, eyes wide with terror. But, he's gone already!! the voice in his head screamed. Look what you did to him, and now he's gone forever!  
  
I know, I know... I'm stuck...  
  
If Yami has left already, then why give up? He may still have a chance that you would destroy by not carrying out what you told him you were going to do.  
  
The small, logical voice undercut the others and seeped slowly through Yugi's frenzied mind, calming his shattered nerves. He inhaled deeply and stared at the sharp blade in his palm, trying to work himself up to a state in which he would be able to cross the narrow bridge without slipping off due to panic or fainting spells. Despite himself, he smiled. I'm such a wimp...  
  
That's what they always said, wasn't it? the voice said, faintly. Yugi put one foot on the bridge without really paying attention to what he was doing. Before I met Yami, that's what they said, right? I remember. Yami, Yami, Yami. Saved me from the grip of society's pecking order...  
  
Yugi found himself several feet away from his starting spot when he next looked up. Not wanting to accidentally drop the shard if he lost his balance, Yugi slipped it back into his pocket and tried to resume talking to himself. It would distract him enough from what he was actually doing so that he would be able to reach the opposite end without too much worry.  
  
If I look to either my right or left, the walls and floor will confuse me... Keep head lowered, straight ahead. Talk to me. Talk to me about the things I did... The people I met... The person I used to be...  
  
Swaying a little, Yugi continued his dangerous journey to the other end of the trap, thoughts swirling with questions and answers and cold hard facts and aimless daydreams...  
  
And, if he had had the strength to trace them all back, they all led to Yami somehow. 


	46. Turbulence

Chapter 46  
  
Yami Yugi walked slowly down the corridors, empty save for the unerring presence of his darker counterpart's lurking demons. He could feel them at his back, his ankles, his throat; all wanting to drain him away, funnel his soul back into that darkest of dark places. He trudged through their intangible grasping fingers, shivering at their damp touch.  
  
Pacing himself, he almost seemed to be wandering; in and out of reality, fading with his fluctuating consciousness. The only thing keeping him from sliding to the floor and relinquishing his awareness to the shadows was the rasping noise of his chain dragging itself across the dust behind him. The friction between it and the stone tugged slightly at his neck, but that was just another sensation to remind himself that he was still alive, and had something to accomplish.  
  
Since the shard was no longer in his possession, Yami Yugi no longer had a direct connection to his friend. The light was still there, but it was fading quickly from his mind with every step he took towards the darkness. Where was his plan? Would he keep wandering these lonely corridors until he met up with his doppleganger? And if he did, then what?  
  
His only companions now being the ever cold metal encircling his neck and the memories of his former partner, Yami Yugi raised his head and looked around. There was something different about these walls... Not in appearance, but in something else. What was it?  
  
Yami Yugi slowly reached out and put a hand against the stone to his right. It pulsed without moving, undercurrents of shadows swirling just beneath the surface. There was a distinct difference in these walls. The way the power beneath his palm moved was noticibly different than the ones he had been travelling past for the last... how many hours? Had it even been hours?  
  
The shadows behind the walls... They are a funnel now, instead of a current...  
  
His antagonist was here, or somewhere very near here. Yami Yugi stood there, hand still placed upon the chilled stone, half paralyzed with sudden fear. Yugi's light was too far away to be any comfort... What would he do when his darker self found him? There were no defenses here, and Yami Yugi was infinitely weaker than the other Yami. He didn't even have the shard as protection...  
  
In his moment of doubt, Yami Yugi failed to notice the rising level of dimness in the area.  
  
The cause of this ominous event was several corridors away from its target; a good distance which was slowly narrowing. Yami glided silently through the pathways of his own mind, searching to eliminate the closest of the intruders.  
  
Still suffering from the after-effects of Yugi's meddling, Yami was unable to fully push himself to the chase; but there was no escaping from him now that his prey had left the sanctuary of Yugi's protection. What was more, Yami Yugi seemed to be heading in his direction anyway!  
  
Fool, Yami thought, making his way towards that faintly glimmering light whose presence he had sensed moving from the Shifting Room. Why does he seek me out? I shall kill him, for I have the means and the will to do it. Does he believe in his survival? Why? After all this, he should know better...  
  
The air swirling with darkness in the wake of his equally clouded thoughts, Yami continued to make his purposeful way towards Yami Yugi. The walls teemed with the strength of his pent-up energy; energy that he would unleash, once he had dispensed of the only obstacles in the way of his carefully crafted plans.  
  
It is regretful. I need not kill either of them, and had I my own choice, the deed would never have been committed. Yet why do they persist in postponing my freedom? What business is it of theirs?  
  
A tingle of anger ran through Yami's chest, and the shadows deepened in volume.  
  
If they would condemn a man to this life I have led, then they deserve death. Why? Do they not understand?  
  
Sorrow injected itself bitterly into Yami's turbulent emotions, and following that, even a small plume of confusion. He didn't understand it, either. He only wanted one thing, and these two were trying as hard as they could to stop him; one of whom was cut from the same dark cloth as himself. So why were they both so opposed to his decision to get out?  
  
Warily, Yami stopped in the middle of his stormy thoughts and stood in the middle of the corridor, his mind questing outwards for signs of his target. Strangely, it had ceased movement and had halted not far away. Yami leaned forward, almost hungrily.  
  
Alas, poor ghost. There is no chance of escape for you, as there will be for me...  
  
Stepping smoothly forward, Yami was suddenly aware of another motion deep in the back of his mind, and paused yet again. The light... It was travelling once more...  
  
The memory of that horrendous, slicing pain invaded Yami's senses. Yugi was in the process of breaching Yami's last defence... And if he suceeded-  
  
Silently hurling messages at his shadowy followers, Yami quickened his pace, eyes flaring violet fire in the dark. Yugi was burning Yami's candle at both ends; and time, what little of it dared enter Yami's ancient realm, was running out. If he was to continue with his escape plan, then he would have to deal with Yami Yugi as quickly as he could. In fact, he'd have almost no swift moment with which to eradicate that minor enemy; it was Yugi, Yugi and his light, who was the real threat.  
  
Pushing what little strength he had left to spare, Yami commanded his dark and intangible forces ahead of him. Yugi wasn't going anywhere, and when Yami caught up with him, there'd be more than his soul to pay for... And yet, despite the intensity of his intentions, the meanest of contemplations crept into the swirling eddies of his other thoughts...  
  
"I am sorry," he had whispered in Yami Yugi's ear, in the Stone Door chamber. Whispered as Yami Yugi lay there bleeding, too frightened to move, as Yami had reached for that cursed shard in his pocket; whispered in the dark, the most judging and final of all elements.  
  
Had it meant anything?  
  
But that brief recollection was lost in the current as Yami prepared to meet the one who had trespassed in his soul, just as most of Yami Yugi's memories had been destoyed in the mind flood, and he thought no more of it. 


	47. Finality At Both Ends

Chapter 47  
  
Yugi was aware of the gathering forces around him, and had stopped walking the bridge to collect himself.  
  
There's more activity in the shadows now... They're everywhere, but they're hesitant. I've still got the shard with me, and the mere presence of my soul here keeps them at bay... But how long will this protection last? And is Yami still safe?  
  
Sure that the shard in his pocket wouldn't be glowing so brightly if Yami's health was in danger, Yugi risked stepping forward, warily watching the shadows in the room swirl and eddy in frusteration near the ceiling. They seemed always on the edge of a sudden attack- diving, circling, yet never actually going anywhere. Still, Yugi found it prudent to keep a close eye on them.  
  
He was now over halfway across the bridge. Anticipation of reaching the other side quickening his pulse and his steps, Yugi failed to notice the slight vibrations running up and down the length of the stone that had not been present there a moment ago.  
  
It was only after a faint, horribly familiar static-like sound reached his ears that Yugi stopped and began to take a more active notice in his surroundings. He shouldn't have been paying so much attention to the ceiling; he realized this with a plummeting sensation deep in his chest as he carefully swivelled his head to look behind him.  
  
There were cracks opening in the stone behind him. No, they weren't cracks; it was more like dark, dark liquid seeping out of the dusty rock, sliding over the surface of the bridge towards its frightened cargo. And it was eating away at the stone, as well; to Yugi's horror, the liquid shadow seemed to melt away the solidity of the bridge, reducing it back to its former, ever changing state.  
  
Yugi watched, paralyzed. The length of the bridge was shortening, little by little, as the darkness slowly ate up the path that Yami Yugi's memories had created. So fixated upon this deadly reversal of entropy, Yugi didn't notice the shadowy figure standing behind him until it spoke.  
  
"Shadows manipulate matter as they please, as I had once told a friend of yours," the smooth, volumnous voice said, calmly. "Did you really think a simple trick of the light such as this would last in the realm of darkness?"  
  
Yugi whipped his head around so quickly he nearly lost his balance. "You!!" he cried, prepared to step backwards; yet he realized this was only putting him one step closer towards the incoming danger, and stopped.  
  
The darker Yami cocked his head, arms folded imperiously before him. It struck Yugi that his shadowy opponent looked a great deal healthier than he had when they had last met; he wondered, briefly, if the dark Yami had already healed himself. Seemingly sensing Yugi's confusion, Yami smirked. "I am not the 'real' Yami; of course, what is real? In a Soul Room, everything is... how should I put it... an avatar. A metaphor, if you will."  
  
Yugi stared at him, uncomfortably aware of the impending death creeping up behind him and the ominous obstacle lurking in front. He was definitely trapped, now... "What do you mean?" he said cautiously, wondering if it would be better to stall the darker Yami until he could figure a way to get out of this precarious situation, or to just make a break for it.  
  
The darker Yami seemed unaware of Yugi's wildly searching thoughts, and proceeded to answer Yugi's question with his infuriating leer still present on his lips. "I have your former partner cornered, Yugi Mutou. Yet, I am still here, sharing this very room with your intruding presence. You see-" And here, the dark Yami's violet eyes flickered momentarily over Yugi's shoulder, where they could both see that the liquid shadow had consumed over a quarter of the bridge's entire span- "as the master of this Soul Room, I can move about here in ways that trespassers such as you cannot."  
  
"Although it is true that I cannot be in two places simeltaneously, I can project myself; an echo of my essence, as you will." The darker Yami unfolded his arms and spread them out, grinning. "So you see, Yugi... I have both you and Yami Yugi's ghost trapped here. Trapped, where you will see your own ends." Yami raised his right hand in a single, commanding motion...  
  
Yugi suddenly felt extremely tired. This whole predicament was becoming too much of a burden, too much of a responsibility... And where did he stand in all this? Was it really any of his business?  
  
The light in his pocket dimmed with his uncertainty, and shifting death crept up closer behind him. He ignored it, staring at the formidable presence blocking his way. So tired... Should he be here? What exactly was the point again? Who could tell him the truth? I just want to go home...  
  
His doubts resonated in other places, regardless of the number of corridors or the thickness of the walls.  
  
Yami Yugi looked up, eyes darkening.  
  
"Yugi?" he whispered, taking his hand off the pulsing energy in the wall. There was no answer; he hadn't expected one.  
  
There was the faintest of rustles behind him, and he turned, eyes searching in the darkness. "So, little ghost... We meet yet again," breathed the blackest of the shadows. Violet glanced off violet as the two stared each other full in the face. "...Yes," Yami Yugi acknowledged, refusing to look down.  
  
"There is not enough time in the world, ghost, to save your friend on the bridge," whispered Yami, his leer almost tangible in the dark space between the two.  
  
"...I know," replied Yami Yugi, shivering with the truth held in those words.  
  
A soft, calculated footfall; Yami had taken a step closer, a hunter testing the mettle of its prey. "Then you must know, ghost," he said, unknown forces curling hungrily about his form like living smoke, "that neither you nor he will see the light of the outside world again. That is my regretful promise."  
  
"If you truly regretted your actions, you would restore everything back to the way it was meant to be," he countered weakly, merely stalling for time. "You should not have begun this at all." Yami advanced another pace, eyes gleaming. "Ah, but it is far too late for me to stop now," he replied softly, the words dropping with a certain weightiness in the silent air. "If I hesitate, I shall lose momentum."  
  
Yami Yugi could only nod; he had run out of things to say. What was there left to say? His dark counterpart held all the knowledge and strategy with which to seal his plans, once and for all. Yami Yugi himself had nothing of much value, and he had lost contact with his only ally. The only thing left now was to wait, unbearably, in hopes that Yugi might somehow find a way to seperate this dark being's intertwined soul and reunite each part to their rightful owner.  
  
The darker Yami was no more than a few feet from his unmoving target. The shadows moved in, opressively, nearly obscuring the sharp intensity of their master's eyes but only serving to darken them. Yami Yugi didn't budge, but his eyes widened as Yami came closer...  
  
I told you I was sorry. I told you I regret doing this.  
  
Am I? Did I?  
  
Yami reached out with a slender finger and gently pressed it against Yami Yugi's throat, a gesture of finality. "And thus it ends," he said, simply; he took his hand away, raising it above his head to usher in fate itself. The movements of the shadows quickened above their heads, around their ankles. Yami Yugi could say nothing, could do nothing.  
  
Could do nothing but wait as his dark mirrored self brought on something unstoppable, and very, very real... 


	48. The Final Wall

Chapter 48  
  
"I haven't come all this way just to give up," Yugi said, almost desperately. He wanted dearly to step backwards, and all his instincts were screaming at him to move, but there was nowhere left to run. The bridge made a rustling noise as the shadows wound silkily up its length, slowly devouring the solidity of the stone behind him. Yugi dared not move.  
  
Yami stood a few feet before him, watching with a cold eye. "As we speak, your friend is being accosted by someone who should have had him a long time ago," Yami nodded, turning his gaze from the work of his demons to the frightened boy standing in front of him. He smiled his slightly vampiric smile, eyes hovering over Yugi's helplessly defiant form on the bridge. "And the other is not merely an avatar; he will rid himself of that obstruction, and then come for you."  
  
Yugi looked at this hauntingly familiar obstruction, whose violet eyes held such an unfaltering disinterst in Yugi's affairs, and something in the other's words triggered a final connection in his mind. Raising his head, Yugi put his hand into his pocket. "The other is not merely an avatar?" he asked as casually as the circumstances would allow, staring Yami in the face. "If he is real... Then what are you?"  
  
Slowly, as if in a dream of gold, Yugi brought his hand out of his pocket. In his fingers he clasped the shard, now glowing fiercely into his palm. Yami eyed it with a cool air, and said nothing. Yugi narrowed the distance between himself and the darker figure, as the shadows crept stealthily up behind up; almost half the bridge had been eaten away.  
  
In a period time that was somewhere between a millenia and a second, Yugi was standing right in front of his dark mirror image, staring up into the other's shadowed countenance. Yami was still smiling, even as Yugi clenched the shard tightly in his grip, as if to prove to himself that its light was still there. It was, and burned brightly.  
  
He was still smiling, even as Yugi brought the shard up in a slow arc, and thrust it into his chest. The point went through the soulless illusion without much resistance; still, Yugi shuddered, as Yami's grinning face melted away into the darkness from where it came. A haunting and shadowy Chesire Cat.  
  
It had felt so easy... Would it be as easy to destroy the real thing?  
  
And as the mirage melted away without a trace, Yugi's heart dimmed with the shard's power, no longer needed for the moment. It hadn't been easy; he'd been fooling himself. Those were Yami's eyes he'd made lifeless, Yami's heart he'd pierced. And it hadn't even been the real Yami.  
  
Shaking his head, Yugi started forward once more. The rustling sounds of the acidic shadows soon fell behind him as he progressed, and soon he could no longer hear them. He reached up as if to wipe away the sweat of his efforts, and found salty tears clinging to his skin. So it hadn't been easy, not at all.  
  
Not at all... And the hardest part was yet to come.  
  
Without thinking, Yugi had reached the very edge of the room. He looked up to see a patch of wall shifting not two feet away from the tip of his nose; he pulled up short and stared at it for a few unblinking seconds before something else caught his eye.  
  
The memory sphere had rolled off a little ways after it had hit the wall, leaving a trail of unbroken floor in its wake. It lay there, balanced on one delicate curve, shimmering with gold on a still island of stone. Yugi walked over to it, carefully bent down and retrieved it. It was heavy and cool in his hands, but its inner warmth still permeated the obsidian surface. It's time to return you to your rightful owner, Yugi thought, and tucked it safely under one arm. He could hear the rustling sounds once again; the shadows were still working away at the bridge. It was now or never.  
  
He looked up warily at the wall barring his way. Would this be the final obstacle? The rustling behind him grew louder, and he knew that he had to stop thinking about it or the chance would be lost forever. With this last, desperate knowledge in mind, Yugi dug out the shard once more and held it before him.  
  
Raising his arm once again, a mirrored action of the haunting death of the specter he had undergone not minutes before, Yugi thought he could still faintly see the ghostly image of Yami superimposed on the wall... He paused, briefly. And in that one moment of hesitation, he a lost part of his soul as the full impact of what he was about to do finally connected with his mind.  
  
The shard, a small and slender spire of light, pierced the heavy stone and almost seemed to be pulled through by an unseen force on the other side of the wall. Yugi wept, but didn't relinquish his grip on his only weapon.  
  
A circle of light radiated outwards from the point where the shard's tip had struck, as if the stone were no more than a pool of water that someone had tossed a stone into. Unlike water, however, the wall did not heal itself, but shattered and cracked as the light continued to spread over its suddenly frail surface. There emitted, from the wall or elsewhere, a keen and high pitched scream... In turmoil, the dissonance that Yugi's action had caused almost seemed to disrupt the never-ending flow of movement in the Shifting Room. The rustling sounds stopped; or had they just been buried under the shrieks of pain echoing around the Soul Room?  
  
Yugi stood, alone and afraid, the shard still poised in midair. His arm was crooked in the position of a horizontal stab. All around his feet were the remains of the wall, his opponent's last barrier against Yugi's light; but Yugi felt no triumph or victory. He felt empty, drained, devoid of something.  
  
I once knew these walls...  
  
Pushing aside a chunk of ruined stone with his foot, and glancing miserably about at the damage he had caused, Yugi stepped forward into the hole he had created and disappeared into the final darkness. Behind him, the shadows reached the crumbled remains of their last defence, and dropped back; too afraid of the absolute blackness that lay beyond that threshold, too afraid to touch the core of their master's soul. Too afraid of the light that seeked to destroy it. 


	49. Dividing the Shadows

Chapter 49  
  
Yami's hand, poised in the swirling air, trembled. The turbulence of the shadows around him and his prey slithered, suddenly hesitant, and gradually slowed in their circular dance of destruction. Death had been averted for the moment... But what had happened?  
  
He has breached the final wall! Yami, momentarily trapped in that tiny world of fear and pain to which he was no stranger, stared wildly into thin air, his eyes seeming to glance off into a place miles away from where the two figures stood in opposition to eachother. As was the nature of Soul Rooms, everything contained within had a direct effect on the rest of it, regardless of proximity or area. Something far away was happening, and the effect, like ripples in a pond, was rushing through the darkened corridors, misguided and untamed. The shadows hung there, unsure.  
  
Yami Yugi didn't move, even though it was clear that his oppressor was distracted. He wouldn't have gotten far, anyway. But he knew who what was causing the disturbance, and he pressed upon that person the best of luck.  
  
Oblivious to his former partner's good wishes but knowing that Yami Yugi was silently hoping for his success, Yugi stopped and stared in awe at the sight that struck him as he entered the core of Yami's mind.  
  
In many ways, the room resembled the Stone Door chamber; yet everything was larger, on a grander scale, seeming to disappear into the darknesses around Yugi's field of vision. The pillars lining the walls twisted upwards into the ceiling, which was obscured by the lack of light. Every block of mental stone seemed cut from a giant's castle, and breathed mysterious vapours into the chill atmosphere. But none of these elements could compare to that which lay at the far end of the chamber.  
  
Where the Stone Door would have stood had this been that prison in which Yugi and Yami Yugi had shared, was instead a great pillar of shadow. Or was it black light? It was impossible to tell. Extending from the floor to the unseen depths of the ceiling, it writhed and coiled around itself, inverting itself in ways that made the antics of the Shifting Room seem dull and ploddish. It gleamed along its length, at once appearing as a bolt of imprisoned lightning and at other times looking like a rope of some unidentifiable metal.  
  
You tell tell at once that this was shadow, in its purest, most untamed form. Shackled here, bound to inferior darknesses, it struggled and teemed with the turbulent energies of its owner. Dull pain pounded behind Yugi's eyes as he stared at it, trying in vain to find some meaning in the unfathomable recesses of its crackling form. He saw things moving beneath its surface, but a flash from its vicious motions and they ceased to be. Images and forms bristled within it, fighting to be released.  
  
This is Yami's mind... Yugi, faintly processing the thought behind the swarms of information crowding his already overtasked brain, couldn't pry his eyes away. Was this what had been nestling in his friend's soul, all these years? Lashing and grabbing at invisible objects hidden beyind its voracious reach; was this the central system of Yami's restless spirit? Before the split, Yami had always seemed so much calmer... He'd been eager for victory, yes- but not to the extent that this angry shadow represented.  
  
Yugi tried to start forward, but driven claws branched out from the main body of the twisting pillar, reaching for him and tearing insubstantially at his arms. Alarmed, Yugi stepped backwards, feeling the shock from their grasps prickling up and down his skin. It hadn't hurt... Yet, there was something violating about touching something that close to Yami's soul, something so inherently part of another person's essence.  
  
Not wanting the sensation again, Yugi paced back and forth in front of this new challenge. What was to be done? He couldn't go near it... And he definitely didn't want to injure or harm it in any way. Yet there had to be something he could do to seperate the darker Yami's soul from that of his former partner's. But how...  
  
Still attracted to the exquisite pain of watching the blinking, flashing light/shadow show of the core of Yami's mind, Yugi turned to look at it again... And somehow noticed something about it that had escaped his attention before.  
  
He saw, now, that it was not a solid pillar of energy reaching from floor to ceiling. It was actually two strands of shadow, interwined, as two pieces of string might be twisted together to create yarn. The twin shadows danced, coiling against eachother, at once both obscene and ineffable in that obscenity. Now that he knew the two shadows were seperate, the idea of it seemed to twist in Yugi's mind, folding and swerving out of range of normal comprehension.  
  
Breathing faster, Yugi advanced once more towards the strange and terrible spectacle. He was entering the very core of enemy territory, and it would not be easy. Yami had no doubt been alerted to his presence in the room, and had probably sent more of his sentries out to bypass Yugi's way... But it would do no good. The greatest threat now was this, this delicate infilteration of a mind whose health on which hundreds of people's lives depended on. One clumsy error, and not only would Domino City be doomed, but Yugi and Yami Yugi would very likely be in an even greater and less escapable danger than they were already.  
  
With this less than comforting knowledge in mind, aware of the pressures circling him from every side, Yugi allowed the tiny and vengeful claws of the main core to reach for him once again.  
  
The second attack was expected, but it was worse. Images exploded in Yugi's head with tremedous force; not knowing whether they were emotions, thoughts or memories, he gasped aloud, his vulerability suddenly becoming all too apparent. Moving slower, arms folded tightly across his chest in an instinctive gesture of defense, Yugi took another step towards the pillar.  
  
Perhaps because he was in closer proximity to the core, the next wave of images that broke painfully over his mind were in sharper focus.  
  
Darkness, darkness, darkness.  
  
Like the underside of the lid of a closed coffin, like the dusty interior of a sealed-up tomb, like the shadows forever wedged in the space between two poorly laid bricks of clay. Like the gaping mouth of a starving infant, or the eye of a forgotten god. An entire collection lay there, spread out among broken memories, rusting and rustling as they waited.  
  
Gazing over them, Yugi stood hypnotized in that brief flash of vagueness, unable to move or think or feel...  
  
And then the claws ripped at another part of his soul, and he was lost, open and vulnerable to the immensity of Yami's essence. Was he himself anymore? Where was he... and where was Yugi?  
  
Yugi who?...  
  
I... I can't remember at the moment...  
  
Wait.  
  
...Yu...  
  
A syllable, once found and now twice forgotten. Someone had remembered it, a long, long time ago. Who had it been? Whose name had it belonged to? Poor little syllable... Can't find its way home, lost in the torrent and the flood and the dimness...  
  
Somewhere, in the room in his mind furthest away from the light of awareness, he could sense the memory globe falling out of the crook of his arm and rolling away into the darkness.  
  
Yugi? Yami Yugi thought, his back against a wall and his eyes still trained on his darker counterpart.  
  
"Yugi Mutou," Yami hissed, the name escaping from his mouth with a certain bitterness attached. The sound of the letters hung suspended in the air for a nothingth of a second, before slipping off through invisible tunnels.  
  
Yugi's head snapped up as the pillar seemed to utter, soundlessly, his name. Tinged with anger, and sadness, it nevertheless broke him out of his temporary cage of loss. He stumbled, recovered, and made a break for it.  
  
Shadows tore all around him as he swam, dazedly, through the snapping air. Pain jostled with his thoughts; spitting, hating imagery drove needles through his head, slowing him down. He tried to concentrate, but it was virtually impossible- He could only hope that the last action he would be caught frozen in would be that of him in motion.  
  
And my only consolation is this... Yami, you never used to hate so much.  
  
The shard was in his hand before he knew it was there. He couldn't feel it through the pinpricks and searing flashes crowding out his every thought and movement, and the only way he knew he was holding it was the smooth, steady glow of light undercutting the storm of rage that was occupying all his other senses.  
  
His hand being virtually the only part of him that was warm, he let the light from the shard guide it upwards through the shadows. He could do no more than let it work its way forward, through the pain and the suffering of someone else's soul, and into a deeper part of himself...  
  
After what seemed like a millenia spent in the horror and numbness of eternal darkness, Yugi finally felt the shadows receeding from his skin. He found that his arm was in a very familiar position; with a knife in his hand, and a chain in front of him, binding the lives of several hundred people and one special person together with the dark intentions of someone else's blackened heart.  
  
He smiled, once with effort that was sustained by the ecstasy of pure victory, and brought the shard down.  
  
The point of the shard struck between the two intertwined shadows and seemed to stick, before coming to life and probing the twin pillar's dark energies with its own healing light. Yugi let the tip guide itself, delicately searching out the fracture, seeking its own former partner just as Yugi had sought through the darkened city. And, after little more than a final, triumphant pause, they found it.  
  
It was as if Yugi had punctured a gigantic water balloon, rather than carefully tweaked the core of Yami's mind with the precision of an expert surgeon. There was a lapse, in which time itself seemed to be draining away out of the twitching pillar of shadows, leaving everything in slow motion. Then, a sudden snap back to reality that caused the walls of the room to tremble slightly, and the shadow minions lurking within to scatter in sudden fear. But this was all merely a prelude to an event, the aftermath of which would leave everything forever changed...  
  
Still slowly, as if in shock, the pillar of shadows began to unwind; still writhing in frusteration, but gradually becoming looser, and looser...  
  
There was a loud, tension-releasing sensation, as if someone had plucked a giant rubber band inches away from Yugi's face. Yugi fell backwards, the shard still clutched in his fingers, and lay there, helpless to do anything but watch.  
  
Something liquid had burst from the pillar as it uncoiled itself into two seperate entities. Black and shimering, it looked to be of the same substance that the memory globe had been made of; yet, this was Yugi's last nerve-wracked thought as it broke over him in a dark, night-colored tidal wave, and obscured everything else from view.  
  
He could only let it wash over his soul as he began drowning in the unleashed essence of Yami no Ni Koe's memories of the past... 


	50. Revealed Past

Chapter 50  
  
In the dark gleam on a black, shiny surface, a small child was born.  
  
Suddenly and without warning yanked into an unfamiliar world, a plane of existance on which he had never stood before, the child wandered in confusion for a period of time. There was nothing here but darkness... Nothing but shadows.  
  
The child stopped to watch the shadows, for they surrounded him on all sides- above and below- and they taught him how to play games.  
  
And as he played with them, these games played in darkness, these shadow games, they rustled and told him that he was here for a purpose. The boy was delighted; he'd never had a purpose before. Eagerly, he awaited the day when he would be finished with these games, and when his purpose would be revealed to him.  
  
Finally, there came a time when the shadows were still there, but were not playing... And the small child sensed another presence in this dark and dusty world where he had been born. Curious, he searched through the shadows to find this stranger, and came across another child.  
  
He looks just like me, thought the boy, surprised. Yet there was a difference; while the child who had spent his existance playing games through an eternal night resembled his surroundings, this newcomer glowed with an unfamiliar aura, light that the other had never seen before. The darker boy didn't care; he had a new playmate.  
  
And so the two played with eachother, instead of the shadows brooding in the corners of the room. The child of light, violet eyes sparkling with a fierce and untamed joy, led his shadowy friend out of the darkness to which he had been confined and into other strange and wonderful places. The darker one came to see the existance of a world outside the one he had grown up in, and relished the new experiances that came with this knowledge.  
  
The darker boy taught the other his skills learned during his time in the room of shadows; he soon began to realize that it was this teaching that gave him a sense of purpose, and kept at it with energy and vigour. The two shared everything, from memories to sensations, and never strayed more than a hairsbreadth from the other's side.  
  
Thus the contrasting pair grew up together, one light, the other night. Powerful already, they kept playing their games, and occasionally they would triumph over some minor evil somewhere. They were surrounded by servants and gold, smooth marble and sparkling sand. They governed as one, and most people saw not two, but a single ruler. Life was perfect...  
  
Until one fateful evening, the balance between light and dark was thrown forever off.  
  
Perhaps the shadows, the darker child's former companions, were upset at having been forsaken so quickly by their master. In any case, the two children were no longer children... and already things were in a turbulent state.  
  
There was a rustling sound, on that day out in the desert. It could have been a scarab beetle, scuttling away into the waiting dusk. Perhaps a lost ghost, without burial rites to its name, dragging its bloodied feet across the smooth sands. None of it could be heard as silent voices echoed in a dusty place that was both there and not there. An ancient riddle, hung suspended in between the balance of night and day; that haunted period of time when the sun and moon switch places, arguing.  
  
Two figures were visible out on the sand dunes, but three stood there. One could be seen, yet could not be seen.  
  
A game had just ended, but another game was in progress. A hidden game, a game you can see, but cannot.  
  
The first voice had a tinge of harsh impatience that had never been there before.  
  
Why must I continue to teach you the rules again? It is simple enough to understand...  
  
I understand, but please, spare his life. He is a friend of my/our father's; his death would not be overlooked.  
  
As if it matters. The shadows will not let this violation of their rules go unnoticed. Let us finish this-  
  
No! It is unnaceptable. This game was unofficial; let him be.  
  
Unofficial?! It is a shadow game! The rules are cast in cursed hieroglyphics on walls of the darkest hue, and the consequences of a failure to win are embedded in every grain of stone. There are no exceptions.  
  
This match was as unofficial as the games you and I played together, my friend. I have a kingdom to rule, and this man that you so unfairly goaded into playing is part of that responsibility. Now, if you please...  
  
The sands shifted, but elsewhere. Darkness was falling over the desert turned battleground. Hurt now, the first voice continued their inaudible arguement.  
  
I am as much a part of this world as you.  
  
....  
  
There was silence between the two. Connections dying at their feet, they knew something had been lost between them. And in the depths of the night lay the dark intentions of one of their hearts, lying in wait for the opportunity to bring itself into the light it was planning to betray.  
  
And so they left that place, continuing their lives with bleaker souls than before their arrival there. One of them had pretended restraint, feigned submission... But the game was not yet over, and only he knew that. He hid this knowledge from his partner, back in the recesses of his old quarters, keeping in safe from his twin's golden sight.  
  
It was the first secret that the darker twin had kept from his soulmate. It stayed hidden, until the death of a respected family friend finally exposed it to the light.  
  
All knew who was responsible. The matter was taken into consideration, and the final penalty was decided. It seemed ironic, however, that the one person given the task of handing out penalty games was now the person being forced to play it.  
  
Or was it two people? The ancient riddle whispered itself dustily in darkening chambers.  
  
There was to be a ritual involving several artifacts of great magical value. Harboring mystical properties, they were the cage in which the perpetrator of the crime was to be imprisoned. Forever.  
  
On the evening of the day before the ceremony, the condemned and his golden partner sat alone in the dusty halls of their childhood. Words uttered here were silent, and reality warped among the shadows.  
  
Light spoke first, his aura dimmed by tragedy and betrayal.  
  
I am sorry.  
  
...I do not understand.  
  
I had no choice. You were out of control. Why? Are the rules of the shadow games so rigid that you would kill a man in cold blood? Tell me...  
  
The darker twin's voice trembled in the still air.  
  
I have explained until my words wore thin and ragged on my lips. Would you have me waste my last breath as a free man in yet another attempt to make you understand? I am cursed, with but a few hours left to live, and still you torment me with these incessant questions.  
  
...I am sorry.  
  
You are merely repeating yourself. And tell me this: Whose idea was it to imprison me so? Without my shadows, you will be unable to carry out the task put before you, King of Games.  
  
Do not call me that...  
  
Answer my question!  
  
We will still be bound together! The core of your power will be kept with me, and we will still share this body-  
  
You think it is the same!! How can you be so blinded to the truth?! Your memories of me will be sealed away with my soul! We will never see eachother again, after tomorrow. You know this as well as I, Pharaoh.  
  
...Why do you not call me by my real name?  
  
Slaves call their masters 'Master'. And still you evade my questions. I ask you once more: Who made the decision to imprison me?  
  
....I am... sorry...  
  
There was a shift in the air, and the corridors where the two were sitting were plunged into the darkness from which they had been hewn. The light had left them for the last time. It would not return.  
  
The child born of darkness, no longer a child, sat against the wall, the last traces of his departed companion's warmth draining quickly from the cold stone beside him. There was nothing left but shadows, and when the morning came for him, there would still be nothing but shadows. And every tear he shed that night was filled with that cursed knowledge, and every year he spent in their drifting company dwelled on nothing but the darkness in his soul...  
  
This suffering lasted for over five millenia, until one of the artifacts he was kept in fell into the hands of a boy named Yugi Mutou... 


	51. Tying Golden Threads

Chapter 51  
  
Yugi Mutou was the Pharaoh's new host. The dark twin watched from his prison with interest; this was the first time he had seen the light in the billions upon billions of lifetimes he had wasted away in his prison. His twin's memories had been locked away, just as he had been- and now that the Pharaoh was once again trying to find them, he had untapped that shadowy power that had been sealed away for so long.  
  
The Pharaoh, his childhood friend, his soulmate of light, had revealed himself to the new host as 'Yami'. A dark suffix to the boy's name, and a foreshadowing to the eventual exposure of the presence still trapped in the ancient spirit's mind. The dark twin could not help but laugh at his counterpart's new title; he knew the Pharaoh's real name, and he planned to use it as a bargaining tool once the time came.  
  
Feeding off the power unleashed from the outcomes of the Pharaoh's new shadow games, the dark twin bided his time, nearly consumed with anticipation and vengeful thoughts. His chance came when the Pharaoh's desire to see his homeland was overpowering enough to allow him to use the darkness to his own means; influencing from the depths, the pinpoints of the Pharaoh's mind that he could reach.  
  
The end result was that of the Pharaoh, unsuspectingly of course, releasing his old partner from the prison to which he himself had condemned the other. In the process, he had abandoned the boy, his prime source of light; the darker twin's manipulations had gone well. He was free now, once again taking it upon himself to shroud the lives of those who would oppose the shadows, directly and face to face as the two had done before.  
  
Not that the Pharaoh remembered any of the old rites, or anything, for that matter. The past had been buried, and the former prisoner wanted to keep it that way. And because it seemed the Pharaoh had taken on a new name of Japanese origin, the darker twin had decided, while rehearsing the pre-planned events in his shadowy mind, that he should do the same.  
  
Thus, Yami no Ni Koe was born.  
  
Dead before birth, cursed after death. Yami didn't remember any of it.  
  
Carefully, Yami Ni managed to nudge the self-proclaimed Yami down the corridors of his own labrynthine plans; skillfully, a hand holding the cheese with which to tempt the doomed rat down cardboard halls, manuevering his prey to the other's eventual resignation of power.  
  
And to see that face... Once filled with inner light, then halved with the darkness forgotten twice, sometimes ice cold and in other moments filled with fire to rival the very embers of the desert sands, to see it so hopeless and broken...  
  
Yami no Ni Koe often laughed to himself, during the nighttime hours when even his former partner's mortal body was asleep.  
  
Then the smooth, inner transition, the combining of two lost souls... But not everything had gone to plan. There was a loose thread, one that had been dismissed by Yami Ni as nothing more than a haunt, a harmless spectre. Yet it had been snagged and pulled on by the boy, Yugi Mutou, unravelling Yami Ni's meticulously crafted plot into which over four millenia had been woven. A billion lifetimes, wasted with the spark of an unearthed memory.  
  
Other events had formed out of this loose and tangled web of identities. But Yugi had seen them all before. 


	52. Rejoined

Chapter 52  
  
Swimming, and lost as he was in the glutinous and murky depths of Yami no Ni Koe's memory flood, Yugi couldn't have known what had or was happening to the one person he had come to save. He coulnd't see... touch... hear... He couldn't breath through the heavy waves of sorrow and betrayal and cruel thoughts that encompassed him, rippling through him. For the moment, he was Yami Ni, and the conflict- that of being two entirely different identities- was tearing him apart; slowly, deliberately, with all the maliciousness of Yami Ni himself.  
  
But being Yami Ni, feeling through Yami Ni's soul and seeing through those haunted eyes, Yugi knew truths that Yami had perhaps once known... yet hadn't since the days of golden palaces and games shared in secret between two friends.  
  
Would he ever know them again? The question ebbed and flowed with Yami Ni's memories, lingering just long enough for Yugi to taste its salty bitterness before the liquid recollections melted it away once again.  
  
The answer to that question lay in a place both near and far from where the past was gradually washing away Yugi's soul.  
  
Yami Yugi slid down the wall. He felt distant. The stone against his back supported him, firm and solid; where had the nightmare gone? He felt as though his eyes might as well have been closed, for he was not yet seeing through them.  
  
After a while, his vision re-focused, and he sat up a little straighter. His mind, though, was still reeling from the events of the last few seconds. He tumbled aimlessly in the void of his mind for a while before lighting on what he was supposed to be doing; what was it? Where would he go now?  
  
The sound of something dragging itself against the stone, a rustling, slowly guided Yami's thoughts back to the present, the untouchable tangibility of the Soul Room. He looked up, past the shadows, which hovered silently in midair. They hung there, unmoving, like black curtains. He could feel no menace from them.  
  
A figure shifted in their midst. Yami's gaze travelled in its direction.  
  
"Who... are you?"  
  
Unsure of whether it was the figure or himself who had spoken, Yami Yugi took a moment to collect his scattered thoughts. "I am..." He trailed off, at a loss of what to say. The figure moved, and seemed to be getting to its knees. "What have you done?!" it hissed, fiercely; yet Yami Yugi sensed an underlying uncertainty beneath the stranger's voice. He remained against the wall, watching the other as he crawled closer. That was when Yami Yugi noticed a second figure sprawled on the floor, behind the first. His thoughts sharpened, deepened.  
  
"I have done nothing," Yami Yugi replied, in a monotonous tone. He still felt disjointed, still disconnected from the world. Then the stranger pushed his way through the shadows parting the two, and Yami saw his own face. Connections snapped into place. It was Yami Yugi...  
  
This shadowed form was the Yami Yugi of darkness, the one fallen prey to Yami Ni's scheme. So, Yami realized, he himself must be the Yami Yugi with the light of Yugi Mutou's soul, the memories of gold and sunlit deserts... but posessing nothing else.  
  
Both were Yami, and yet would be nothing if they weren't re-united as one entity. Yami, he knew, was someone seen, yet not seen. Here and not yet here.  
  
Dark Yami Yugi stared at his counterpart. "Why?" he demanded, confusing Yami Yugi still further. Their identities- Yami, Yami Yugi, Yami no No Koe -had been mixed and matched so many times over it was getting hard to keep track of who was who. And was there really a difference? What was the gap between darkness and light?  
  
"...Why what?" Yami Yugi replied, which seemed to infuriate his dark counterpart. "You seperated us... How could you? We were whole for once, and you... you..." The Yami with memories of nothing but darkness seemed to be having difficulty processing the situation. Yami then realized that the second figure, slumped behind the shadows, must be Yami no Ni Koe. Then Yugi has suceeded, he thought, feeling a tinge of hope.  
  
There were now three of them; Yami Yugi, posessing memories of light; Yami, who had been seperated from Yami Yugi and now only saw what Yami no Ni Koe had allowed him to see; and Yami no Ni Koe himself, who had kept nothing but darkness form the beginning. Three different shades of the same shadow.  
  
"It was not I who seperated you... But, listen," Yami Yugi said, sitting up a little further from the wall. "I need you back." Yami glowered at him from the darkness. "Put us back the way we were. I no longer need you," he stated, firmly. Yami Yugi felt helplessness returning. This task now seemed impossible; how to get this stubborn and sorrowful creature to remember?  
  
Yami turned to look at Yami no Ni Koe, whose still, unconscious form faded in and out of focus from behind his minion's darkened bodies. "He and I... We are both of the shadows. He and I have more in common than you would understand. So why do you continue to hinder me? All we want is to escape," Yami breathed, crouching on the floor. Yami Yugi had heard these words before, and knew that they were of Yami no Ni Koe's mouth and not the Yami he'd once been. "That is a lie. Do you not remember-"  
  
"A lie!!" Yami shouted, swinging back to pin Yami Yugi with a fierce glare. "How could five millenia of pain be a lie? How could an eternity of darkness and slavery to one's own slaves be a lie?!" He rose, and stood staring down at Yami Yugi with enraged violet eyes. "It is far more likely that you, doppleganger, an illusion, would lie to me than my own blood."  
  
Saddened and weary, Yami Yugi dropped his head. Would it ever be over?  
  
"Bring me back... Stop this, stop it..." Yami had slumped back to the floor in front of Yami Yugi, and seemed to be wavering between abject rage and total despair. Yami Yugi let loose a silent sigh. "Why must you return to that darkness?" Yami peered at him through half closed eyes. "I am of the darkness, thus I would return to it," he said plainly, as if stating an obvious fact. He turned away and began to brood.  
  
"You do not understand, do you," Yami Yugi whispered. "Two shadows are not going to give you the wholeness you desire. There are things I posess that he-" Yami Yugi indicated Yami Ni's body with a turn of the head- "can never bring you." Yami regarded Yami Yugi with the air of one who has been promised the Brooklyn Bridge. "You assume you speak the truth," he said, deadpan, and shifted his gaze to the wall.  
  
Yami Yugi felt panic seeping into his chest. Yami no Ni Koe would wake up any minute, and then all would be lost. How could he convince Yami to rejoin him?  
  
All at once, it seemed to come at him, from a long distance over an enclosed bridge. He reached into his pocket and drew out the shard he had taken with him after leaving Yugi. In his hand it glowed, as he recalled times lost to Yami no Ni Koe, times shared with prismatic mirrors. Yami turned his head, unable to ignore its glow. "What is that?" he asked, suspiciously; yet Yami Yugi could see the longing in his eyes.  
  
He held the shard out, and Yami wavered, indecisively. "Do you remember this?" Yami Yugi asked softly, the shard holding a steady light that was causing the shadows to drop further away from them. Yami looked around, a little too quickly not to betray his confidence. He turned back to the object in Yami Yugi's hand. "Why should I remember?" he replied, cautiously. He stared at the shard, almost hungrily.  
  
"...Touch it. Touch it and come back," Yami Yugi pleaded, seeing the look on the other's face. He wants it so much... And yet, Yami no Ni Koe had already appealed to Yami's dark consciousness. Yami was weakened, torn. The strain is disorienting him, Yami Yugi knew.  
  
The conflict was apparent in Yami's eyes as his gaze was drawn further into the memory shard's golden depths. "...I have no place to return to, save the darkness... Why do you insist on having me come back to a place from which I have never been before? This light is not mine." To Yami Yugi's horror, Yami broke eye contact with the light and turned away, almost ashamedly. He looked back towards Yami Ni, who still hadn't shown signs of life.  
  
Yami Yugi's voice, when he spoke again, was more controlled and persuasive than his mind was. The words coming out of his mouth seemed like an echo from an unseen source, deep within. "You are mistaken," he said, quietly. Yami didn't answer. "The light is a bridge. The light keeps the balance between darknesses. Do you really believe that it is the darkness itself which so attracts you to your shadow?" Yami stared at Yami Ni's form, silent and brooding.  
  
The shard shone brighter as it lay in Yami Yugi's hand, which now rested on the floor between the two. Unlike a candle, its light didn't flicker and waver, but held steady in the palm of its bearer. Yami almost seemed to flinch under its persistent glow.  
  
"Shadows cannot exist without light, Yami." Yami Yugi held the shard up, and finally, Yami's gaze could not refuse its strange and unearthly beauty. Hesistantly, he reached up and towards the obsidian surface...  
  
...When he drew back, there were gold embers shining within his eyes, his soul. It had been less than a second after his fingertips had brushed the shard, and yet already Yami Yugi could see the links, the connections, clicking rustily together. The darkness, having forgotten for so long, had finally remembered its old partner. Yami looked broken, and yet, strangely proud.  
  
"I will go with you," he said. 


	53. In Passing

Chapter 53  
  
There was no mind flood, no agonizing spasms of mind and soul. The light and the dark knew eachother too intimately for such a violent display; both were freed, and in an instant the ancient riddle had been solved. The one who could be seen yet not seen was now a single entity once again. Yami was Yami, who was also Yami Yugi, the light and the dark co-existing in a single soul.  
  
However, Yami no Ni Koe was also irreversibly part of the whole.  
  
Oblivious to this fact, Yugi coughed and heaved the last traces of dark memory from his lungs as he pooled liquid shadow on the floor. The flood had drained away, back to whatever torrid hole in Yami no Ni Koe's mind it had come from. The light had come, the nightmare was over. For the moment.  
  
Not entirely sure exactly where he was, Yugi got to his knees, trembling with the aftershock of witnessing over five millenia's pain compressed into what now seemed less than a minute. He noticed that he wasn't in the same chamber as before; perhaps the Soul Room had re-arranged its contents due to the sudden seperation of its master.  
  
The contents of Yugi's scrambled mind began to reassert themselves as well. It worked, he thought, giddily. He swivelled, causing the world within the boundaries of his vision to swirl dizzyingly around his head. Where was Yami?  
  
Now worried that the the corridors may have altered themselves so drastically as to lose him inside, Yugi hesitantly took a step down one of the halls. For one panicked moment, he thought the walls might be moving; and maybe they were, but he couldn't tell. Something was shifting, a change was occurring. The stones seemed to whisper his name, and Yugi knew, then, that Yami's mind was his own once more, and Yami was calling him back.  
  
Yugi put out a hand and felt the currents beneath the cool walls surrounding him. Yami was there again, the Yami he had known, the light and the dark. Yugi felt a strange wilting sensation; could this finally be the end?  
  
He stood with his palm on the stone for a few more preciously peaceful moments, and then began his journey down the once more familiar passageways.  
  
The bridge was being crossed, the length between them grew smaller. Soul Rooms were the manifestation of their owner's state of mind, their emotions and desires; now that Yami was back in control, the time it toook for Yugi to be re-united with his former partner was considerably shortened. The seconds, the minutes, the timeless hours.  
  
As if in a walking dream, Yugi rounded another corner where the shadows grew deeper on the walls, and stopped.  
  
Darkness breathed heavily in Yugi's ear as he stood, eyes focused on the figure near the wall. Yami stared back; violet echoing violet all over again. The sight of him, back in the realms in which he'd always belonged, sent untracable shivers through Yugi's skin. Here was the familiar. Here was the reborn... And was this reincarnation the same?  
  
Yami smiled. That small, ancient and knowing smile he had posessed, bereft of the malice it had taken on under the darkness of its recent owners. It drew tears of relief from Yugi's eyes. "Back again," he whispered, and Yami lowered his head slightly in agreement. There was a rustle behind him.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe's dark wrist rested on Yami's collarbone as his arm was around Yami's neck; the two wavered briefly behind the thick shroud of shadows. Yugi watched, paralyzed, as Yami Ni dragged Yami further down the corridor, until their struggle was lost in the black midsts.  
  
Too late, Yugi's reaction time snapped back to awareness. He lunged forward, but met with only stone through the now active shadows. One last resort on Yami no Ni Koe's part... Yugi was sure this barrier was the final surge of energy that Yami Ni posessed. Yami and Yami Ni would be trapped together on the other side...  
  
Yet, even as Yami had been resisting Yami Ni's grip, and though Yami Ni's hold was solid, there had been an unusual confirmation between the two; as if their souls had passed unseen messages to eachother. Something mutual had been exchanged. And somehow, Yugi was unafraid of what was transpiring beyond that stone wall.  
  
There was nothing left to do but wait, and hope for whoever came back to him... 


	54. The Last Betrayal

Chapter 54  
  
The mustiness of ancient stonework and the still, silent qualities of the shadows told Yami that they were in the Stone Door chamber. Yami no Ni Koe, even in his weakened state, still had a certain degree of control over Yami's Soul Room, though Yami suspected that this manipulation had not come without a cost. He stood and peered into the void before him.  
  
"This is the last time."  
  
Yami could see his adversary's outline, a sillouhette slightly darker than the surroundings, violet eyes faintly visible even through the musty darkness of the room. A sigh was heard, accompanied by a familiar rustle- or had the rustle itself been the expelling of ancient breath?  
  
Taking a step towards the noise, Yami stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting.  
  
The sigh came again. "Are you now certain that you remember me?" Yami no Ni Koe smiled, faintly, but was somehow unable to force his usual malice into the gesture. Yami wondered if Yami no Ni Koe could see the sorrow on his face, through the shadows blanketing the walls. "I cannot give you up, Pharaoh..."  
  
Silence coated the surrounding air. Yami could sense Yugi on the other side of the door, a trace of light that was barely able to permeate the solid stone. Yami no Ni Koe bristled slightly, as if he could feel their connection. "Stop that!" he hissed, almost inaudibly. He stood, a glare settling itself in place of his weary smile.  
  
Yami turned his mind to the matter at hand. "Jealous?" he inquired coldly, cocking his head. He peered into the shadows. "Your envy grows tiring, Ni Koe. You have caused my partner and I no end of grief, and all for what?" His voice had raised itself, and Yami no Ni Koe's eyes widened. "All for what?!" Yami Ni repeated, his own words sharp with a bordering hysteria that undermined his former icy composure.  
  
He stood straighter until his eyes were level with Yami's. They stared at eachother, echoing violet. "You have not forgotten me after all..." Yami Ni whispered, face almost pale now; as if he had been bleached, stripped of his power, Yami thought. Yami Ni took a step closer. "I can see it in your eyes. You remember me... what happened that night... millenia, millenia ago..."  
  
Yami Ni's voice trailed off until Yami could no longer hear him.  
  
Still with his hands in his pockets, Yami opened his mouth. "Truly, what happened was unfortunate. However, you brought it upon yourself, Ni Koe. You and your Shadow Games... My father should have known better-" Yami Ni's head jerked up suddenly, from where he had apparently been staring at the floor. Yami saw with alarm that Yami Ni seemed much fainter... as if losing focus...  
  
"You cannot even call me by my real name?" he said, almost pleadingly. His head lowered again, and Yami could no longer see his face.  
  
Yami remained still. "What is past is past," he said, impassively, and this seemed to tear something deep from Yami no Ni Koe's soul, for the room trembled and Yami Ni looked up with eyes so filled with rage that Yami involuntarily took a step backwards.  
  
"Past?! PAST?!!" The word echoed off ancient stone and hissed bitterly in the cracks. Yami Ni had discarded his cool facade and was nearly howling. "Pharaoh!! You mock me. We were partners, Pharaoh! Partners!!" Yami Ni reached out, to inflict whatever action upon Yami; he couldn't tell, for he deflected Yami Ni's wrist with his own hand.  
  
Yami Ni went on babbling, seemingly not noticing or comprehending Yami's apparent rejection. "We have been together from the very beginning, Pharaoh..."  
  
The child of light. The child of darkness.  
  
"Yes... However, Ni Koe-" Yami Ni seemed to flinch at this falsified name, and Yami's words caught for a moment. "However, you forget that the light existed momentarily before the darkness was unleashed."  
  
Do you want to play? a voice echoed somewhere far below the room. Trapped within glossy black, waiting to be recalled...  
  
"Father... He was fool to go ahead with the proceedings. I never asked to have you as a partner-" "Light cannot exist for long without its counterpart," Yami Ni reminded him, his eyes retaining more of their sharpness and edge as he spoke. A trace of his old smile hovered on his lips, and Yami was torn between hatred and regret; for what, he was uncertain.  
  
A shadow passed over Yami Ni's face like a curtain as his mind revived the sordid events of the ancient, ancient past. Yami watched him, his disinterested demeanor dropping back as he, too, recalled the images burned within his soul...  
  
Yami no Ni Koe's birth. The teaching of the Shadow Games... the Playtime. As Yami began to remember, he now realized that the whole scenario had ran with ominous undercurrents. The rituals, the ceremonies. He and Yami Ni had been paired up for someone else's gain, used to hold back power that might have fallen into the wrong hands.  
  
Yet the plan had failed, the dike flooded, Yami now knew. Yami Ni had taught him the strength of the Shadows during their childhood... But who had thought to reveal to Yami Ni the secrets of the light? Instead of becoming the tool they wanted us to be, Yami realized, Yami no Ni Koe had nearly become the very darkness they were supposed to be holding back...  
  
Do you remember me?  
  
"You were out of control..." Yami murmured, more to himself than the figure before him. "My father, the priests... They had to make sure the balance of light and darkness was in check without allowing you to regain that power..." "There is no need to tell me again," Yami Ni said quietly, bitterness hanging heavy on his lips.  
  
The dead man lay on the desert sands; the ground beneath him was crimsonless and unstained, for his death had been dealed out unseen in his mind. The shadows had witnessed the event, but said nothing. Justice hung her scaled crookedly, the balance corrupted.  
  
"You were out of control."  
  
The rituals, the ceremonies. The young Pharaoh was frightened...  
  
An image sprung, blossomed in Yami's mind. Something golden, heavy and cool in his ten year old's hand... One of the object's sharp corners grazed his skin, and he mentally turned it over, wondering. A single eye, gold like the surface on which it rested, stared up at him. A shiver ran through metal and flesh.  
  
Yami watched as the rituals ended. Someone was talking to him, although he was trying not to listen, tears streaking his childlike cheeks. They are sealing away the darkness... where it will never see the sunlight. It shall be there, guiding you as it always has, young Pharaoh... But with it shall go your memories of it. It is better this way, Pharaoh...  
  
The young Pharaoh had never liked the High Priest. Neither had his companion- but, where had his friend gone?  
  
He looked back down at the Puzzle. It seemed to him that a voice was calling out to him... asking to be freed, to be released from its golden prison...  
  
Perhaps he had never had such a friend.  
  
"You traitor," Yami no Ni Koe was saying, dimly in the back of his mind. The part of him that was not busy calling up images registered this, and strove to pull him back through time to the unlikely present.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe was crouched on the ground now, huddled into himself. "You could have stopped them," he was saying over and over, in a curiously hollow voice, seemingly devoid of emotion. The effect was unsettling.  
  
Weary and shaken, Yami stooped down to Yami Ni's level, and could think of nothing to say.  
  
So it had been Yami Ni responsible for his Dueling abilities, his Penalty Games... Hidden within the core of his soul, trapped in the Millenium Item all through Yami's reign- and even then, harboured one stone wall away from Yami, he'd never seen the light for five millenia.  
  
Harnessing the shadows had been no easy task, and everyone had paid for it, in the end. Not even one of the Pharaoh's priests, with her powers of precognition, had foretold this.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe had paid the most, perhaps. Left alone in the darkness, with only his and the Pharaoh's memories for company- and bitter memories they were. It must have been torture, Yami realized, to have endured a million lifetimes of the same dusty horrors, trapped in a former friend's soul with no way to reach him. No wonder he had resisted. No wonder he had manipulated everything.  
  
The priests had been wrong. In sealing away the darkness, they had upset the balance, and the effects had collided five thousand years later. The situation was now more dire and unstable than it ever would have been in the past...  
  
"I am sorry," Yami whispered, finally letting go of the chill around his heart. Yami no Ni Koe's shoulders shook. "I need you back," he sobbed, like a child.  
  
And at that final breaking of the spirit, Yami knew what had to be done.  
  
Feeling as if his soul was weighing down Shadi's scales through the stone floor, Yami stood up, trembling. "I must go," he said, and heard his own voice shake.  
  
Yami no Ni Koe raised his head, and Yami saw with shock that there were no tears staining his dark face, even though it had been clear he was racked with sobs. His eyes, though... his eyes tumbled Yami's heart into a deep, dark chasm, and pinned it there in freefall. "You cannot," he breathed, horrified.  
  
He is once again bound to serve me... Yami thought, the knowledge painful. Just as they had all planned...  
  
"You are no longer my partner, Yami no Ni Koe," Yami whispered; every word another razor to his soul, a hundred to the figure whose eyes reflected tenfold the sorrow locked there. "It is over, gone... Too much time has passed for us to be reunited. I..." He had to look away, into empty shadows, in order to continue. "...I must return to Yugi Mutou."  
  
Yami Ni stood, which Yami wasn't expecting. "You cannot leave me here!! Not again!!" he cried; he grabbed Yami's sleeve, and Yami made no move this time to pull him off. "It is a prison here, a hell... You- you- would condemn me as they had condemned the both of us?!" Yami no Ni Koe's fingers were pinching Yami's skin through the cloth, painful and biting. Yami winced.  
  
"You were never meant to be," he said sadly, and Yami Ni abruptly dropped his wrist.  
  
He turned to leave, slowly, half expecting Yami Ni to come after him again. But Yami Ni just stood there, watching his former partner turn away to leave him to his own slaves, forever imprisoned in the never ending darkness of the past. Yami knew that as soon as he left the room, sealing away the dark in the process, he would once again forget about his father's decision and the shadow child with whom he had shared a Soul Room from the very beginning. Yet...  
  
Yugi Mutou waited for him, outside that lonely chamber. Yami was the darkness now, that hungry soul in need of light, and that was something Yami no Ni Koe could no longer- and never had been able to- give him. Nobody had given Yami no Ni Koe their light, although he had given everything away, as the tool he was supposed to be... And now it was too late.  
  
Arms outstretched, Yami's fingertips brushed the Stone Door. Up until now he had succeeded in ignoring the burden of what exactly he was about to do, but his strength was waning. Ni Koe was still back there, and would be there for eternity... How can I live with myself at this very moment? How can I simply walk away... Is it the force of my duties as a Pharaoh, or some hideous curse laid upon us by that High Priest?  
  
Always, fate. Always, destiny. Yet it never should have happened this way.  
  
A rustle at his back. Yami turned to face Yami no Ni Koe one last time, and it took all the willpower left to him to look his first and former partner in the eye.  
  
"You killed those of Domino City. You trespassed in my soul, and Yugi's... Is this what partners do?" Yami said softly; the words spoken not as a pathetic final attempt to reason, but as the finality of truth. "There is no way to allow it. I would have it otherwise, but your fate was sealed from the beginning." Yami ni Ni Koe stared at him, as if in uncomprehension.  
  
"I had to get out! Do you not understand that?!" Yami Ni cried; Yami tried to shut him out and turned away, the conflict beating hard in his ears. "You cannot leave me here! Pharaoh!!"  
  
"Would I have it that the light was not here to give me strength to leave you," Yami whispered miserably, backing away from the broken figure in the shadows. "But... I must leave..."  
  
And as the door swung open into the darkness, Yami no Ni Koe didn't follow, but only fell to his knees and cried. "You must come back- come back to me or kill me, Pharaoh... Kill me!!" he wailed.  
  
His desperation was the only thing to leave that chamber. Though he knew that his memories would be left behind as he left, Yami felt that Yami Ni's voice would haunt him for the rest of his spirit's life. I have betrayed myself...  
  
"Kill me!! I have seen the light twice- it is a hundred times worse having seen it twice! Let me die, Pharaoh, let me..." Yami Ni was rocking back and forth, sobbing, and still no tears formed on his dark skin. Yami shut his eyes.  
  
As Yami stepped out of that chamber of nightmares, the last trace of his dark counterpart's soul drifted out of the opening, a breath on darkness' wind.  
  
"...you..."  
  
You what? Yami thought briefly, sorrowfully, having already known the answer... and then...  
  
The Door shut itself behind him, and everything was as it was. 


	55. Thoughts on Killing the Ghost

Chapter 55  
  
I know now there is no turning back.  
  
Even as I step through this immense stone doorway, my eyes strain to turn themselves to their twins, the mirror images I have been longing for. The only way to restrain myself is to forget.  
  
He calls me still, but I must turn my back and run; a coward seeking to end his suffering? Am I rationalizing by telling myself that this is the only way to stop it? I wish I knew. Perhaps he would tell me- but then, a second later and he will no longer exist for me. A single step and none of this will have happened.  
  
Yet it is this fact which makes me hesistate on this threshold- What questions could be answered, what memories unlocked and what burdens could be lifted if I let him stay freely within my mind? It is this that will haunt me for the rest of my near immortal life, and I will never again remember the source of my pain.  
  
He will stay there in that chamber, Dueling behind my back and dealing out the Shadow Games he has been condemned to play with the sinners of this world. I cannot save him, ever. I could save him now, but the weight of his actions lies heavier on my heart than my love for him. Am I rationalizing again? Could he ever redeem himself? The deaths he is now responsible for have sentenced him for eternity. There is nothing I can do.  
  
I cannot condemn him for wanting to come back to the land of light. But his means of returning have disrupted the balance almost beyond repair, and have resulted in the deaths of many innocents. I have been torn between my duties as a Pharaoh and my love for a friend and partner; and in the end, I had the shadows numb my heart to him. I am besot with regret and other conflicted emotions- but above all, there is the presence of darkness which blots out that which would prevent me from carrying out my tasks.  
  
And there is the fact that I would never exchange places with him. I am too afraid; truly, cowardice is something that should not be felt by any ruler. But the darkness, the infinite depth of the shadows... I fear it, and I think I may have feared its master. We were born at almost the exact moment, light and dark, the eternal soulmates- but in the end, I realized that I had always been too weak for him. Perhaps he scorns me, perhaps he pitied me. There had always been a strange look in his eyes when we were together, whenever he looked at me... I was too blind to know what it was, and now I am too weak to look any further into his gaze.  
  
This secret weakness of mine is so well hidden, I think, that no amount of prying with any key will unearth it. It is locked away with him, in that stone room; he is the only one now that will know what it is, and he will mock me for it. But I, too helpless and fearful, will be too far beyond his walls to hear him.  
  
It is ironic, that the one fated to play the Shadow Games should be so afraid of the dark.  
  
So I will walk out of this place, never to return to it again. I will be that chamber's last glimpse of the light, leaving for a brighter partner. It seems humorous, that my role is now of the dark. Times have changed.  
  
Yugi Mutou waits for me now. I am re-burying the past and its dry corpses, in order to awaken to a new life. The ghosts haunt me ever after, but this burial site shall remain untouched in my soul. I wonder if my newest partner will remember the incidents of the last few days, although I doubt it. We reside in eachother's souls, each inflicting upon the other, and his memories are probably even more susceptible to negation than mine.  
  
I am nearly dead with the horror of what I am about to do. The shadows are judges, hanging over me and watching with a cold and accusing eye. I want to scream at them, tell them to let me be, to cease their malevolent hover over my soul. But my lips are as silent as theirs, and all I can hear as I walk out the door are the tortured sobs of my second voice.  
  
They die away soon enough. 


	56. Balance

Chapter 56  
  
"Anzu phoned," Yugi reported, delving into the world within his mind. He peered through the darkness. "Yami?"  
  
Yami was sitting on what looked like a throne inside the cavernous chamber that housed the giant Stone Door. Yugi'e eyes flickered uneasily towards the looming mass beyond his partner, then back to Yami. Yami's eyes brooded within themselves, and he seemed haunted and unfocused. He turned his head slightly at the mentioning of Anzu. "Who?" he said distractedly. The name seemed unfamiliar to him.  
  
Yugi looked at his partner, concerned. "Anzu Mazaki," he repeated, and the words felt new and unused on his tongue. He withdrew, running the name through his mind, feeling lost. "She phoned, and, uh, asked if we wanted to go to a movie... or something..." he murmured, uncertainly. He shook his head in bewilderment.  
  
Yami stared into an empty patch of air, his thoughts dwelling in some other place into which Yugi could not see. "Your friend Anzu... The image her name puts in my mind is of a... a shadow. A gift from the darkness." His voice throbbed in the dusty room, hollow and dry. Yugi said nothing.  
  
"She has been away. It is as you sense it... Anzu has been somehow brought back." Yami's eyes fluttered briefly, as if in the foggy depths of hypnotism, or a perhaps a dream. "From what, I cannot recall. The darkness took her there, the darkness brought her back."  
  
A deep sigh penetrated the thick, slumber-like atmosphere, and Yami raised his head to look Yugi in the eye for the first time during his appearance. Yugi's heart felt weighted as he met Yami's gaze, felt numb as Yami spoke again...  
  
"I have been so tired lately. There is something within me that I cannot bear to see, cannot afford to keep and cannot live without. I cannot remember."  
  
Yugi knew the reason for his recent nightmares. His brief spells of depression, his weariness.  
  
"Have I been selfish?" Yami didn't seem to be looking at him anymore, nor did his voice seem directed at Yugi. "Have I been cruel to my partners, burdening them with the presence of my own tormented thoughts?" The shadows waited for an answer, but there was none, and never had been. Left hanging, the room was quiet as an undisturbed tomb.  
  
Feeling useless, Yugi stood there, unable to do anything else. This helplessness, this weakness, could never be comforted or supressed- but then, leaving was not an option either. Sorrow, pain and bitterness... where had it come from? If from the darkness, would darkness take it back?  
  
Think of this as a last parting gift, Pharaoh.  
  
Yami smirked. Once, just once. Enough to make Yugi take notice. "Yami?"  
  
"It is time for me to face what has happened here," Yami announced, a coldness in his eyes and heart. He stood with his back to Yugi and the open corridor, facing the immense stone door. Dark electricity prickled along the cracks in the floor.  
  
Yugi watched as Yami stared fiercely at the sealed chamber, and wondered, briefly, of its contents. Dust and more dust, most likely. Well, whatever was in there, Yami seemed to have a bone or two to pick with the skeletons in that closet.  
  
Yami took a deep breath, and let the words run like precious water through his mind...  
  
What is past has passed. I give back your gift of darkness, you unearthly shadows, you hidden beasts, for it is your burden and yours alone. These words are my ritual and my very voice is the final seal. Do not try to pass along your duties, for I am the Pharaoh of our own times and my word is of the god's own lips.  
  
It is over.  
  
There followed a silence so profound, it seemed as though sound itself had somehow funneled away into itself.  
  
And with it came relief, and peace, and release from the midnight ghosts haunting all their souls. Now and forever.  
  
The two turned and walked out of the room, the sand beneath their feet making a rustling sound, each grain oiled with foreign and exotic fragrances. Desert fumes wafted out behind them as they left, but neither looked back, and the tendrils of scent drifted back to the darkness.  
  
"By the way," Yami murmured, a light growing steadily in his eyes as he looked sideways at his partner, "your friends requested yesterday that you meet them today at the Burger World on 42nd. Did you forget?"  
  
Yugi gazed back, and raised an eyebrow. "They did? Oh... are you sure?" he said cautiously. "I don't remember that." Yami looked away, and responded lightly. "I am fairly sure, Yugi."  
  
Yugi looked at him, then shrugged and gave in. After all, they both knew that memory can be an unreliable thing.  
  
They turned and met eachother's gaze, and they both saw there the link that had brought them through trials that neither of them would ever remember, but which they couldn't forget; that was the very paradoxical nature of their souls that would someday save them all again, and restore the balance. Time and time after, for all eternity. Yet hope had replaced the weariness of this task, and now it was time to renew it all.  
  
The room began to resume its previous untouched state, as the sound of the pair's footsteps faded from the stone. "Yami. There is no Burger World on 42nd." A dark, amused laughter followed this revelation.  
  
And after that, there were truly no more words.  
  
~~~THE END~~~ 


	57. The Overlengthy Author's Note

"And after that, there were truly no more words."  
  
Author's Note (I lied)  
  
Well, it's been a long (long, long) hard journey, but I assume if you're reading this, you've made it to the end. If not, go back and read the whole thing, you lazy cheater.  
  
The Second Voice was born from three things: A morbid fascination with the concept of "soul rooms", an earlier YGO fanfic I wrote called "All The Little Voices", and of course, Yu-Gi-Oh! itself (which actually spawned the previous two things, but, uh, disregard that for now).  
  
This note is designed to help you further understand the world of SV and therefore the workings of my own inner mind- or maybe it's just a little rant to amuse myself while I begin my next fanfic (Bakura, do I have plans for you). Besides, a long story deserves a long rant, so here goes! (if you read all of it, I'll give you a cookie. Or a thank-you note. I think you know which is likelier).  
  
Think of this as the DVD extra. Don't you feel special?  
  
~Part One: It's So Dang Long!!~  
  
Q. What's the difference between a novel, a novella and a novelette?  
A. A novel is a fiction book for adults of more than 40,000 words. A novella is a short 7,500 to 40,000 work of fiction, usually written for young adults or adults. A novelette is an extended short fiction story usually between 7,500 to 20,000 words. Sometimes the terms "novella" and "novelette" are interchanged.  
  
According to this information (SpiritLedWriters), SV must be considered a novel with approximately 65,326 words (a novel must have at least 40,000). Again, congrats to all who made it. You have made this project worthwhile, and without your support, I probably never would have made it. No, seriously. I'm a major slacker and I'm amazed I actually finished this thing.  
  
However, this story has taken years off my life (uh, more like weeks off my homework time), so be thankful.  
  
~Part Two: Why Yugi?~  
  
I happen to like Yugi, thank you very much. He has his share of hate mail, of course- it's not that hard to dislike him; he is, after all, the Main Character- but he's one of my favorite characters for one simple reason: Yami.  
  
The concept of 'soul partners' (there is no official term for them, is there?) intrigued me so much it led to a whole lot of introspect on my part about what it would be like to have a yami, a 'soul room', etc. You know, the science of it all. And because Yugi and Yami Yugi seem so much more familiar with each other than, say, Bakura and his ever-lovin' tomb- robbin' friend, I decided to write about them and them alone.  
  
Besides... I like his hair.  
  
~Part Three: The Lingo~  
  
The language in SV has been carefully planned out. While the dialogue is not exactly the main focus of the story, I spent countless hours tailoring the character's speech patterns to be consistent and representative of their personalities.  
  
One thing I do regret is that Yami's speech patterns seem to be awfully formal, but as I was caught in the middle of the story, I didn't want to lose the consistency. In fact, I'm so obsessive about consistency that I made sure there were the exact number of spaces between the top of the page and the title in every chapter, but since FF.net gets rid of all my formatting, you won't get to appreciate it.  
  
But I digress. Badly.  
  
As I was saying, Yami is very formal because he's the Pharaoh. I wondered after a few chapters if I should lay off a bit and allow him, just once, to say "don't" instead of the rather awkward "do not" (he tended to sound sort of like Yoda in my head, after a while), but, well, you know... Consistency.  
  
I don't know why I'm bothering with this part, seeing as there are about three people who actually speak in this story. Yami and Yami Ni no Koe have pretty much the same speech patterns, and Yugi's were simple. I'm about his age. I should know how a fourteen / fifteen year-old speaks.  
  
On a last note, you may notice I don't use the terms 'aibou' or 'hikari'. Personally, people who say things like "oh it's so KAWAII!" naturally, out loud, and on a regular basis kind of... uh... freak me out.  
  
Note to people who say things like "oh it's so KAWAII!" naturally, out loud, and on a regular basis:  
  
No offense. Please don't kill, flame or spam me.  
  
Okay, before I dig myself a deep dark grave, there's just one thing I'd like to get straight: CONSISTENCY. I use the term 'yami' only because everyone else is familiar with it, and also because even our children's book order catologue knows it. Jeez, even the English dub uses it (out of context, perhaps, but that's irrelevant).  
  
~Part Four: The Plot Is Twisted, Man~  
  
The plot was so confusing that I had to jot it down repeatedly on my piano notes while I was practicing. If it was hard for you too, don't worry. You're not alone.  
  
Dangerously enough, much of it was improvised. SV started off as some snippet of life from Yami's ancient past, and evolved (or rather, mutated) into something much darker and horrifying. Aren't you glad? As it stands, I sort of made it up along the way, and it came to meet me halfway; sort of like the bridge scene with the memory globe and suchlike. Or something.  
  
Because of YGO, I'm no longer afraid of the dark. In fact... the dark is cool. I liked the whole 'balance' concept, and the concept of yamis (yami? yamies?), and eventually the two became one. I could probably slip another stupid analogy in there somewhere, but this is getting long so I shall resist.  
  
~Part Five: Time Flies~  
  
SV FF.net info: Updated: 5-19-03 - Published: 1-17-03  
  
I started writing this when I was fourteen. I'm one year older now. That's about the time it took me to get from one end of this tale to the other- and it wasn't easy. Oh yeah, and fanfiction.net and mediaminer.org didn't help much... malfunctioning all over my nice pretty computer... grumble.  
  
While writing this, I've been known for my speed in updating. If you want to know the secret to my success, look towards a little thing I like to call UNHEALTHY OBSESSION. That and skiving off schoolwork will do nicely, and will work wonders for your story. If'n you want to be knowing my work ethic, it be goin' like so: I usually get about a chapter up per week, two or even three if I'm lucky.  
  
The only problem with this system is the fact that your fanfic grows at an astonishing rate, and people have no time to catch their breath. It's like, "Oh five chapters... well, I'll let it alone for a week or so and see how it's doing." A week later... "What the- THIRTY-THREE CHAPTERS?! GOOD GRIEF!!!" Collapse, faint, ignore fanfic.  
  
There's another reason why you are all such a brave bunch. And reading all this, too. You know, if I were a reader, I would have given up long past chapter seven. I admit it- I'm a poophead that way.  
  
~The Afterword to the Afterword~  
  
Hey, it's been surreal. Thanks again for reading this- it was fun to write and I hope you enjoyed it, and I also hope you will plug it to all your aquaintances.  
  
Thanks especially to Amariel and Lethe, whom I met through fanfiction. And Anime Ana of MM.org, and Blue September, and all the other fine folk who stuck with me till the end. And to Him, to whom I own the pleasure and ability to write this monster.  
  
Love y'all.  
  
~The Animagess~ 


End file.
